Marketing Fiction In A Changing World - Part 6 - The News Game by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World
  Part 6
The News Game
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts in this series:

Last week, Part 5:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/02/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_25.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/02/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_18.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/02/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/03/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html


In Part 5 I referred you to a non-fiction book about the history of science fiction in which some of E. C. Tubb's work called "melodramatic." 

Here in Part 6, we're going to extend the reasoning laid down in Part 4 and examine how the News Game has changed over decades (and why) -- which could indicate what it will be in another decade or two.

We also (as writers who want to stay in print) have to gain a grasp of the connection between non-fiction and fiction -- between News and TV Series -- and what Marketing has to do with that connection.   

Let's start with Name Calling as a writer's tool.  "Melodramatic" is a Name that Romance is often "Called" so it didn't surprise me that E. C. Tubb gained that epithet for what is essentially pure male-action-adventure writing.  His work is built on Relationship, and dips into Romance (he does great Hunks).   

The discussion of Name Calling here extends the discussion in the series on writing Dialogue,
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/dialogue-part-6-how-to-write-bullshit.html

The most popular post in the Dialogue series is How To Write Liar Dialogue, and in a way Name Calling belongs there.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/11/dialogue-part-5-how-to-write-liar.html

Name Calling is a useful tool for giving a character depth without sketching an entire life history.  It adds "color" to a characterization. It's a great way to make a minor character hated by the reader so the death is a triumph. 

So why is it that "Name Calling" tags a character as worthy of a messy death? 

"Name Calling" is revealing your own personal opinion, ramming your opinion down someone else's throat.  Neither the label nor the tone of voice explains or reveals anything about the object discussed, but only about the speaker. 

That's why "Name Calling" doesn't "work." 

The objective is to harm the other, but the result is harm to the self. 

Name Calling is an aggressive act.  It's a great tool to increase the pacing and action-element in a scene.  Think of the bar scene where gamblers sit around a table.  One calls another "cheater" -- boom, bar-fight. 

When you "call" someone a "name" (or categorize or classify them together with others who share one of their traits), you are revealing your opinion, which says a whole lot about who you are and nothing at all about who the other person is. 

The statement the Name Caller makes about him/herself (regardless of what "name" is "called," or who is so labeled) is, "I am a person of very weak character, and I hate myself because of that, so I resent the fact that you are not weaker than I am so that I don't have to work to get stronger.  I am going to destroy you." 

It doesn't matter if the Name being Called is a prestigious label or a derogatory one.  The act of "Calling" reveals all.  This is an application of the writing rule: Show, Don't Tell.  You don't tell the reader that this character is weak.  You give the character a line of dialogue that reveals all. 

Putting someone on a pedestal above you by Naming them something prestigious reveals just how little self-esteem you have. 

As a Dialogue Technique, Name Calling is fabulously effective for communicating to the reader that the character doing the "calling" is in a peak emotional state (discussed in previous parts of this series on Marketing). 

That peak emotional state is so very treasured by Public Relations professionals for a reason. 

And that reason explains the connection between TV News and TV Fiction Series (and Reality Shows also). 

As explained in previous parts of this series, the state Advertisers treasure is the one in which emotion supplants rational thought as the driver of actions. 

The act of plastering a category-label on another person is done in this activated emotional state so you don't have to think.  Name Calling substitutes for the hard work of evaluating all the disparate traits that make this other person unique.

Name Calling is a technique for denuding a person of individuality.

Name Calling is a technique for creating a human "herd." 

For more on Public Relations and Herd Creation as the goal of Advertising, see the previous entries in this series listed at the top of this post.

Name Calling -- real, serious, professional Name Calling -- is a complex technique, and has been reduced to a mathematical formula by Advertisers. 

Professional Name Calling may turn out to be the source of our problem with the prestige level of Romance and the HEA.

It is possible that Romance has been the victim in a PR campaign -- or possibly we're just collateral damage. 

In Part 5 of Marketing Fiction In A Changing World, I did note in the discussion of E. C. Tubb's DUMAREST OF TERRA series that Tubb gives us an example of how to use words with precision and variety -- a lesson in why a writer must develop a massive vocabulary.  Choosing the exact word for what you must say lets you say it more succinctly - and that increases the "pacing."  Tubb is a writer to study for this technique. 

The Dumarest Series is erudite, deeply philosophical, and precisely focused on today's hotest thematic topics -- yet it is pure Action-Adventure and textbook Romance writing.  Tubb uses Theme exactly as I have explained in the posts with THEME in the title. 

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

Tubb does everything I've explained, all of these techniques flawlessly executed simultaneously -- and makes it look effortless. 

And yet, the historical work on the history of Science Fiction that I pointed you to in Part 5 of this series, written by those who should know better, "calls" E. C. Tubb's work "melodramatic." 

Yes, name calling in non-fiction.

Why is "melodramatic" a name that's being called?

It's just a word.  It's a technical term for a specific genre of stage play. 

Oh, there's a lot of reasons to regard this label as a name being called. 

If we can understand the nuances of what's going on with this, we may be able to figure out where the opprobrium laving the HEA is coming from.  If we can figure the origin of that opprobrium, we may be able to fix that problem. 

An adjective like "melodramatic" refers to a quality which is only present subjectively.

The usage of Melodrama to refer to Science Fiction and Romance has changed the meaning of the word Melodrama over time. 

In the mid-20th Century, the Merriam-Webster definition was "...emotional in a way that is very extreme or exaggerated : extremely dramatic or emotional..." held true.

The word was used to refer to an "extreme" or "exaggerated" fictional situation - a caricature of reality.

The more modern Urban Dictionary says:
The state of being overly emotional - therefore often in a situation that does not warrant such a strong reaction.

Can you see the subjective judgment components of the term Melodrama?

What is "extreme?" -- well, that's your opinion, and might not be mine.

What is "exaggerated"  to you may seem in correct proportion to me, or even understated.

What is "overly" emotional?  What exact situation does in fact warrant 100% response? 

Should responses be metered by degrees of emotion driving them? 

Remember, we're discussing "degrees of emotion" in the context of PR, and Parts 3, 4, and 5 of this series of posts. 

This is all about Advertising which is the science of arousing emotion to a peak high enough to get humans to form a herd and follow the leader to buy a product (such as your book, for example) -- regardless of whether the herd is rushing to self-destruction (paying a lot for a badly crafted book).

PR (Public Relations) is the mathematical science of creating human herds and then gaining power over the herd's stampede.  Advertising is the main tool of PR.  Once you understand what's behind Advertising, you become immune to the herd-joining impetus of the emotions advertisers try to whip up.

Here's an article that gives you a "professional" slant on emotional content used to increase visitor response to a website:
http://www.searchengineworkshops.com/articles/emotional.html

So where emotion is involved, what does it mean "overly emotional?" 

Where that borderline between over and under is, depends on who you are and what else you've experienced.

Imagine two characters arguing about whether the argument two other characters are having is "melodramatic" or not.  As an exercise, write the argument the two characters overhear, and write their elevator conversation as one calls the argument melodramatic and the other says it's not melodramatic. 

Now review Part 4 in this series where we ended off discussing how Hard News used to omit any hint of opinion, and carefully reveal the editorial policy whereby they chose "important" stories and ignored others. 

In that kind of a Hard News organization, a JOURNALIST can't use the word Melodramatic -- except when quoting someone. 

The word melodramatic itself is commentary -- and Hard News is factual and only factual.  There are many such words that Hard News must avoid.  Interestingly, English provides many alternative ways to convey facts without ladling on opinion. 

So there are a hundred little tricks of the trade journalists used to use to keep all hint of opinion out of News Reports: word choice, syntax, tone of voice, and juxtaposition of topics are only a few. 

Another characteristic of Old Fashioned Hard News was that, while every outlet had an editorial slant (clearly delineated in editorials and never hinted at in News items), and each outlet selected things to report on according to their slant, they did not CRAFT A NARRATIVE.

Today, TV News (and most other media outlets) blatantly admits (via TV anchors) that they omit any item that "does not fit the narrative" being crafted, and they do those omissions merely to justify their editorial slant -- no matter how much hypocrasy oozes through the cracks.  They see nothing wrong with that because it's The News Game -- it's essential to the business model of TV News to create a "narrative." 

The very definition of News has changed, just as the definition of words such as Melodrama has changed. 

This discussion in Part 6 of Marketing is about where that change came from, why it happened, and what that means for the fiction-delivery-system into which you are marketing your novel. 

 Very few people channel-surf News programs and do relentless contrast/compare studies to sift out the few real Hard News Facts buried amidst the torrent of opinion.

Most people don't understand the reasons the use of the word Melodramatic disqualifies a piece as a News Report. 

Most people have no idea there is a Narrative being "sold" (via precise mathematical PR techniques).  And in fact, if you told them, they'd consider you a bit daft, or maybe a flat-out liar.

In Part 3 of this Marketing Fiction series, we discussed the movie Anchorman 2, and most especially the PR campaign that surrounded it's debut. 

OK, it's a funny movie -- but it's about the News Game.  If you're going to set a novel amidst The News Game, you must understand the game, and you must understand how very little of that game your readers believe exists. 
-----------------
Here's a quote that turned up on twitter from poster TheBlackBoard:

TheBlackBoard
"Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious."
—Peter Ustinov
-----------------
Anchorman 2 may be an example of that principle. 

In the SAVE THE CAT! trilogy of books on screenwriting, Blake Snyder makes the point (emphatically) that you must, at all costs, KEEP THE PRESS OUT OF THE PLOT. 

When you bring in news stories, your plot explodes in your face, your theme goes out the window, and your project flops...unless you really know what you're doing. 

So that's another objective we're pursuing here.  We have to really know what we're doing when trying to sell the HEA to readers who live in a HFN world portrayed on TV News as if HFN were the only reality. 

So, we're looking at how the News Game has changed (and why), and we're looking at the audience perception of that Game. 

Once you have both of these firmly in mind, you can use Press Conferences and Newspaper Items as plot-points in a way that viewers of TV News who think that news is "reality" can accept and believe. 

So changes in Hard News on TV have happened in lockstep with changes in Fiction. 

The reason can be seen as PR.

Public Relations software, Google tracking, all in service to Advertising can measure audience size, composition, and emotional response to a TV News or Series segment by segment, even minute by minute.  The News item or "Act" of the TV Series exists to 'set up' the audience's emotional pitch for the run of advertising that comes next.

Have you noticed how many more ads, more products, are pitched between segments of content than was the case 10 or 20 years ago?  Have you noticed how the runs of ads are as long, or longer, than the content-segments?  Have you noticed how the length of the ad-runs differs from hour to hour and day to day around the week?  Have you thought out the reasons for all this?  Writers need to understand.  Others can ignore it all. 

This new PR science is called "metrics."  All TV Network content choices pivot on "the metrics."

Driving that PR push to measure and quantify every aspect of the eyeballs attracted and held by the content-segments, is profit. 

The TV metrics' objective is to control which eyeballs are present for which commercials.  That's the opposite of online advertising which aims to choose the commercials to suit the eyeballs preferences. 

PR "metrics" is the business-model shift that caused a shift in content in broadcast and cable TV. 

The shift in content is easiest to see in News -- but is also visible in fiction. 

This business model shift in TV News is largely attributable to the advent of the Internet -- but more broadly, to technology, computers, data-mining.  You all know the NSA problem -- Big Brother Is Watching You out of your TV set, whether you're hooked to broadcast, cable or internet streaming. 

Cable became popular and brought us the giant, world-girdling news gathering and delivering organization CNN (Cable News Network). 

Cable was advertising driven (PR) but also subscription driven as you couldn't get it over broadcast airwaves.  You had to have cable, and that's a subscription fee.  In some cases, Government had to force cable to carry local broadcast channels. 

Cable still operates on this antiquated business model which is why it's collapsing.

Cable charges subscribers a FEE for a BUNDLE OF CHANNELS (most of which you don't want).  They make you pay for other people's taste.

That's why, for example, Fox Business Network (FBN) is bundled by Cox Cable (in the Southwest) with the Sports Channels.  FBN is a non-lucrative item to carry -- very VERY small audience.  Stuffy, abstract, numbers-strewn, full of abbreviations nobody understands and about nothing of any moment to most people.  But almost every single household lives and breathes SPORTS.  So the bundle taken together is profitable.

CNBC is another cable Financial News  channel and is in the general-tier subscription (Bloomberg is another).  CNBC is not a lot more entertaining than FBN but is bought by the Cable provider in a bundle from CNN which everyone wants.

Now, it is true that the Financial Markets Coverage is all about gambling, aggression, swagger, bluffing, playing chicken over shorted stocks, so the appeal to Sports fans is obvious.  Most professional investors are sports fans, or pretend to be for professional reasons -- you have to have something to make small talk about with strangers.

The Cable business model is to sign up subscribers who pay a monthly fee -- then go to channels and buy content to deliver to the subscribers, all wrapped around advertising. 

The Cable company has a department that markets TIME (between show segments) to advertisers.  Cable is a middle-man operation.  They get paid by subscribers and by advertisers who want glued-to-the-screen-eyeballs, and they buy and operate equipment and Content with the money they collect with hopefully some profit left over. 

With the Internet growing, people are "cutting the cord" to Cable -- just subscribing to the feeds they actually want.  That's why your Cable bill keeps going up -- fewer people subscribing means less income to spend delivering the same (bloated) number of channels.  Of course, taxes are adding to Cable bills, too. 

Another reason Cable bills are going up is DVRs.  People time-shift, and skip commercials, so commercial time is worth less because there are fewer eyeballs being delivered to the advertiser.  Cable operator gets less per commercial, but still has to pay for the program content -- so they stuff in more ads. 

Cable advertising metrics show a waning effect -- in the 2012 Elections, vast amounts of money went to Cable ads but barely budged the needle in most races.  People skip commercials, audiences are smaller.  PR formulae are being adjusted.

As writers, you followed carefully the Auction of Spectrum by the US Government a few years ago where they mandated the shift from analog to digital (that forced people to buy new TV sets or $50 set top boxes).  The conversation to spiffy new flat-screen (or 3-D) TV's in digital is almost complete.  I own an analog TV still, but never turn it on!

The spectrum auction re-allocated spectrum so we can have LTE phone-data service for smartphones.  It reserved some spectrum for Emergency Services.  It totally changed the foundations upon which TV signal delivery has been built -- and as a result, as people adjust their habits, Cable's business is less and less profitable.

And Advertising Firms are going NUTS!  PR still works, but their business model doesn't! 

A new generation of Advertising Executives are conquering this problem.  Google leading the pack.  The new generation of ad-execs grew up on a world dominated by Google. 

Internet Advertising is beginning to work, thanks to Google's "tracking cookies" that lets them sell your eyeballs to advertisers selling something you might be interested in.  It doesn't work yet, though.  They keep trying to sell me what I bought last week and so don't need anymore.  They need better spies.  They are inventing them.

With Cable came hundreds of channels -- with DIGITAL and INTERNET came thousand and thousands more channels, websites, blogs, YouTube, all kinds of ways to spend the little time you have to acquire information you need, and entertainment your frayed nerves absolutely demand.

I've noted on this blog how fragmented the USA has become -- nobody watches any one thing.  About a third of the country's 320 million watch the Superbowl. 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/04/us-superbowl-cbs-ratings-idUSBRE9130P720130204

This fragmentation of the market works against profitability -- but in favor of the Indie market. 

With streaming, on a Roku or Apple TV, or other device, you have access to Vimeo, Netflix, other movie deliveries, Amazon Prime with TV shows -- more hours than anyone can possibly watch.

If you track the rise of this fragmentation against the rise in the number of commercials  between content-segments, against the longer advertising-runs vs shorter content segments, you find something very interesting.

As advertisers have become more desperate, content-segments have changed the nature of their content.

This is evident in TV Series Fiction, yes, but much harder to spot.

It's most clear in the TV News. 

As advertisers have become more desperate for glued eyeballs, TV News has become more "narrative driven" and content has changed.

How exactly has content changed?

Where once opinion was prohibited, now it is required to be salted into Hard News.

Where once narrative was prohibited, now it is the only thing allowed.

Where once name-calling was prohibited, it is now reported on by other networks.

Where once mention of the existence of another network was prohibited, it is now THE breaking news story of the day that this anchor said that nasty about another anchor on a third network.

It isn't enough that Anchors yell at Guests who yell back, everyone talking at once, on opinion or analysis shows -- they yell at anchors on other networks! 

Where once the Lead Story Of The Day would be something you needed to know to figure out what to DO to avoid harm to you and your family, now the Lead Story is some bit of local-news gossip.

What's gossip?  Oh, that is another study that belongs in the Dialogue series.

Essentially, gossip is something of personal interest woven of emotional dynamics.

Today National News And Commentary shows focus on traffic accidents, road rage, mentally disturbed people shooting children, rape and other violent crime, and the subsequent court cases.

These are "reality show" drama topics popularized by Oprah Winfrey, but they are local gossip and belong in local newspapers aimed at the people with a personal connection to those involved (such as the Apartment Building Fire on the block behind your house - what happened? Who's responsible?  Who was killed?  That matters if you know the people -- otherwise it doesn't.)

Why are the 20 minutes you have to discover World Events you must know about (to plan your next vacation; to know why you couldn't get a call through to Europe) now occupied by local gossip, oblitterating the information you need?

Maybe it is a political conspiracy, but "never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity."  Or perhaps by profit motives.

Now, as a writer, I'm all for PROFIT.

But Cable profits are on the decline. 

What's really going on?

The same thing has happened to TV News as has happened in Book Publishing under the impact of technology.

As noted in a previous part of this series on Marketing, TV News, back in the day when it was news rather than gossip, was not a profitable department of a broadcast network.

Networks ran News Departments (and corporations owned Newspapers or Wire Services) for the prestige of it.  To get prestige, you had to deliver real facts, first and devoid of opinion. 

Just as big publishers were owned by bigger businesses for the prestige of it, and therefore could publish unprofitable but "important" books, Networks owned News departments and lost money but delivered Hard News.

Neither big corporation looking for a tax write-off cared whether anyone watched or read or paid any attention.  The few who did pay attention awarded them Pulitzer Prizes,  etc. 

The information feed to "the public" (e.g. the audience of a TV News show) was a by-product of the operation, not the point of it.

Then came Pac-Man Publishing where publishers ate each other, and now audience-fragmentation is weakening all Cable companies.

Both these trends were caused by technology -- innovations coming in waves of 20-year-duration.

The not-for-profit publishing operations suddenly had to turn a profit -- Accounting Department Ruled All Decisions. 

Publishers were taken over by "the bean counters" -- and where there used to be indepedent acquisitions editors who chose books to publish, suddenly those same people had to take a book proposal "to committee" (marketers, cover artists, PR department) who would have the final say on whether a book was published.

The Editor would later be reviewed for profitable choices, and could lose a job on the basis of not making as much money for the company as the editor in the adjacent cubicle.

And TV News operations had to go from delivering information to making a profit because the TV Series fiction wasn't making as much profit (because of falling audience numbers).

Not only that, but the PR science of "metrics" could now measure which news stories kept the most eyeballs glued to the commercials.  (I know it sounds ridiculous; but it is really happening.) It's not enough to make a profit; you must make the most profit.

Advertisers pay for your "free" TV News, and it's their metrics that determine what is or is not News. 

TV News isn't just on TV.  Check Yahoo News, AP, CNN, NBC, FOX, New York Times, any source you want -- correlate with the concurrent TV news -- same items handled the same way, only slightly different slants, and sometimes radically different narratives.

They call it the 24-Hour-News-Cycle -- and a number of Anchors have used those words with tension in their voices, with scorn and even derision (yes, I'm evaluating).

Note how there's an ad running before videos, popups and pop-unders evade your blockers.  The content of those news stories is chosen according to the responses to those ads.

The PR principle to remember when duplicating this research is that the "News" Stories with the highest emotional pitch (tragedy, pathos, horror, The Injustice Of It All, Victim-hood, etc) get the most responses to the advertising. 

You'll see this with the Healthcare Law coverage -- the focus will be on the joy of individuals who have been relieved of an injustice, and the utter hopelessness of victims who have become victims of an injustice. 

Watch how that coverage unfolds into the next Election - watch the emotional content.

The reason that statistics, facts, figures and even reality don't count, and just don't make the News, is that tragedy, pathos, horror, injustice stir audiences emotionally, thus cutting critical thinking out of their motivations -- right before a commercial run.

This shift in the relationship between Prestige and Profit has been going on for centuries -- since Guttenberg, actually.

The Aristocracy were Patrons of the Arts (not Patrons of News!  That was delivered by the Indie Writers called Bards -- some of whom had Patrons!) for prestige not profit.  With an Aristocracy dominant, you see the rise of Rumor as the main source of information. 

Trace the fall of the Aristocracy over centuries against the rise of the concept "Commercial Art" which is what genre fiction is.

Now we have almost all Art (even News Reporting) done as Commercial Art.  There is a minority practicing "Fine Art" -- but they have to find another way to earn a living besides writing.

Have we reached the end of this cycle?  Will e-book, website art, etc. draw Patrons (e.g. advertisers can be regarded as Patrons who must be pleased by content produced)?  If not, what happens at the end of this cycle?  Will we break out of this Historical pattern of Prestige to Profit to Prestige to Profit?

If you look closely at TV/Webisode/IndieFilm as an industry, you can see how, at this Profit-dominated point in this cycle, we are seeing Prestige and Profit confused, mixed up with one another, the line blurring.

In the early 21st Century, we have a situation where the only prestige you can achieve is by amassing huge amounts of money.  Power goes with that money -- but Prestige does not naturally come from fortune.  Your current fiction audience is under a trip-hammer PR Messaging campaign to convince them that the only way to Prestige is Profit, and in fact Profit is Prestige (there's no difference).

Prestige is a word/concept being redefined, just as Melodrama has been redefined.

The central problem we've been tackling on this blog is the problem of the Prestige of the Romance Genre in general and the Science Fiction Romance (and Paranormal Romance genre) in particular.  Why the general scorn for the HEA as a life-goal?

Perhaps we've been looking in the wrong direction for answers to that question.  Perhaps we are collateral damage of the tug-of-war between Profit and Prestige.  Romance SELLS gangbusters compared to other types of novels!  We have a Profit Producing Business Model in the exploration of the HEA and how to achieve it in your own life.  Is that why we lack Prestige?

If so, then our Prestige should rise as Profit becomes more prestigious?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Plot-Subtext Integration Part 2: Ruining The Romance With Words by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Plot-Subtext Integration Part 2:

Ruining The Romance With Words 

by 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Today we'll examine a terrific novel in a picture-perfect series from Ace Science Fiction  which I just absolutely love -- but find myself gritting my teeth over certain brief scenes that are actually the core of the matter for me.

I will include "spoilers" -- we're talking here about the 11th novel in a series, and no way can you discuss that without revealing where those previous 10 have been leading. 

These scenes score an "epic fail" for me because of the sour note in the Romance thread of the plot. 

Why? 

What could a writer do about it? 

A lot, and it would be easy and not make the book longer. 

Previously in this blog series on writing craft, we've discussed Dialogue with special focus on invective.

Here is a post from 2009 which opens the issue of dialogue with a broad overview.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/02/expletive-deleted-tender-romance.html

It refers to a previous series of posts on Verisimilitude vs. Reality where we examined how "dialogue" differs from the way people just talk in real life.  Dialogue is not "real speech." Writers watch a lot of television and/or movies to develop an "ear" for the difference.

We have also discussed dialogue from other angles. It is part of characterization, pacing, plotting, foreshadowing, choosing a title, description, narrative, and of course conflict.  In fact, dialogue integrates all the techniques we've discussed here separately.

Here are some previous posts about dialogue:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/10/dialogue-parts-1-4-listed.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/11/dialogue-part-5-how-to-write-liar.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/dialogue-part-6-how-to-write-bullshit.html

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/dialogue-as-tool.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-tricks-of-scene-structure-part-2.html

The magnificent writer whose work I'm going to criticize here is Mike Shepherd, a military Science Fiction writer I admire.  He has replicated, in modern writing, the style and rhythm of the 1940's science fiction writers.  This is a tremendous feat!

I read a lot of these very old novels as I grew up, and saw nothing wrong. 

As a teen, I hated "Romance" genre novels because they were about stupid people doing stupid things for stupid reasons.  Romance has GROWN UP since then, and now we have the kick-ass heroine who won't take "no" for an answer, and we also have women who are hackers, gamers, research scientists, and even military commanders.

Mike Shepherd has created a character for an interstellar war era who comes from a line of military leaders who have risen to be crowned "King" of multiple star systems.

This family line is surnamed Longknife. 

Shepherd has created a galaxy-spanning human civilization which, as humans will do, has split into human vs. human to hold a war or three. 

In the meantime, this civilization has encountered aliens, conducted long and complex war against them, and settled the conflict (maybe not permanently, but things are looking good at the moment.)

Shepherd has extended the human life-span and created artificial intelligence computers and a material for warcraft hulls he has TRADEMARKED the name of "Smart Metal" (so other writers can't use this term.)  This is magnificent work. 

Shepherd has several series set in this vast universe, and today we are focusing on the 11th in the series, the 2013 release, Kris Longknife: DEFENDER by Mike Shepherd from Ace Science Fiction.

The previous titles in the Kris Longknife Series are, in order:
Mutineer
Deserter
Defiant
Resolute
Audacious
Intrepid
Undaunted
Redoubtable
Daring
Furious
and in 2013, Defender

Slated for October 2014 is Kris Longknife: Tenacious, followed by another novel that takes up the doings of one of Kris's main foes who became an ally, then a filling in of the backstory of the war fought by Kris's father and grandfather. 

These other three people are tremendous, colorful characters -- but they don't grab my interest as Kris Longknife does.  I'll give them a try, though, because Shepherd is a great writer.

Kris Longknife starts out in Mutineer as a slip of a girl, just out of school and taking the stage in her life.

Her ancestors are Kings, her whole family has a reputation for making trouble, for getting people killed, for doings that have the massive signature of Pluto Transit Events.

Natal Pluto position in a birth chart is one of several signatures necessary to produce Fame, Infamy, A Place In The History Books (not a footnote size one either).  Pluto magnifies whatever it forms an aspect with -- hard aspects produce vast results that get noticed.

If you've followed my discussions on how a writer can use Astrology to structure a character or plot that readers can grasp at a glance, you know that these natal chart formations actually form family-signatures -- yes, astrological charts show family tendencies.

I used that well known (but unnoticed by most people) fact to create the Farris Family Reputation ("Every Farris Makes Headlines At Least Once In Life") for the Sime~Gen Series. 

Said another way, "The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From The Tree." 

This inheritable factor is the subject of all kinds of folk-sayings, and is just common knowledge.  So writers can use this to plot multi-generation tales.

I doubt Mike Shepherd has studied Astrology, but he has portrayed that Pluto driven natal chart feature of The Warrior-King perfectly. 

Kris Longknife starts out at the beginning of this series with people trying to kill her -- assassinate might be a more accurate term, considering she's scion of this Royal family.

Along the way, she develops a sizzling-hot relationship with her bodyguard who routinely saves her life -- she does her share of saving, too.  In fact, she saves planets, civilization, humanity, even aliens -- big things. 

The point of view stays nicely inside Kris's head, and we see all these problems through her eyes -- we see how she muddles through, assesses and takes risks, congratulates herself when she makes a good call, and aches all over when she gets people killed.

But that's the "Longknife" pattern -- people standing anywhere near her get killed, but she survives (without doing anything to make that happen.)

The few people who do stand near her and survive with her become our friends and win our affections, too.  They are well drawn characters with depth, focus, and values we can admire.

So though this series is mostly about battle strategy and tactics, about politics, revolution, (or revolution thwarted), assassinations, face-saving, and engineering miracles on the fly, all these larger-than-life things are happening TO very real, very deep and sensitive Characters. 

And all of this magnificence is accomplished despite really bad dialogue writing.

What's bad about it?

It is what Blake Snyder labels (in his SAVE THE CAT! series on screenwriting) "on the nose" dialogue. 

"On the nose" is the opposite of "sub-text."

"On the nose" means when you "hit the nail on the head" or say something explicitly, in spades, flat out factual recitation.  "On the nose" means no allusions, allegories, symbolism, misdirection, sarcasm, white lies, but just meaning exactly what you say.

"Subtext" on the other hand means that the utterance contains vocabulary, subject matter, and perhaps plot references (i.e. references to actions under consideration) that have absolutely nothing to do with what the Characters are actually discussing and they both know it.

Good romance is rife with "subtext" and resorts to only one on-the-nose utterance -- which is that final, angst-ridden admission of a by-then-obvious truth, "I love you."

The writing craft term "subtext" means that the "text" (what is actually being said) is "sub" or under that which seems to be the subject under discussion.

Here's a snatch of subtext dialogue from the screenplay BASIC INSTINCT:

---------quote-------------

INT. THE HOUSE

It is beautifully done in a Santa Fe motif.  She goes to a
bedroom of the living room.

                         18.


Nick sits down on a couch facing the bedroom she's walked
into.  Gus sits across from him, his back to the bedroom.
There is a coffee table between them.  She leaves the
bedroom door halfway open.

An old newspaper is on the coffee table them.  Nick reaches
for it.  The headline says:  VICE COP CLEARED IN TOURIST
SHOOTINGS.  A headline underneath says:  GRAND JURY SAYS
SHOOTINGS ACCIDENTAL.  There is a photograph of Nick.

He stares at the paper.

        CATHERINE (O.S.)
    How long will this take?

Nick puts the paper down on the coffee table.  He is lost
in his thoughts.  Gus picks the paper up.

        NICK
        (looks up)
    I don't know.

Nick, facing the half open bedroom door, sees a mirror near
the wall of the bedroom.  The mirror reflects her in the
other corner of the bedroom.  She is taking her clothes
off.  He stares.  She strips down.  He sees her back. She
has a beautiful body.  Naked, she puts a dress on.  She
doesn't put any underwear on.

        NICK
        (continuing)
    Do you always keep old newspapers
    around?

        CATHERINE (O.S.)
    Only when they make interesting
    reading.

And she is suddenly out of the bedroom.  She stands there,
smiles.  They look at each other a long beat.

        CATHERINE
        (finally)
    I'm ready.

They get up, head out.

        GUS
    You have the right to an attorney.

        CATHERINE
    Why would I need an attorney?

INT. THE CAR - DAY

They sit in the front; she is in the back.  The car goes
over the winding, two-lane Mt. Tamalpais road.
                         19.


The fog is heavy.  It's starting to rain.  We see the beach
far below.

        CATHERINE
    Do you have a cigarette?

        NICK
    I don't smoke.

        CATHERINE
    Yes you do.

        NICK
    I quit.

She smiles, looks at him.  A beat, and he turns away.
Another beat, and she lights a cigarette up.

        NICK
        (continuing)
    I thought you were out of
    cigarettes.

        CATHERINE
    I found some in my purse; would you
    like one?

He turns back to her.

        NICK
    I told you -- I quit.

        CATHERINE
    It won't last.

A beat, as she looks at him, and then he turns away.

        GUS
    You workin' on another book?

        CATHERINE
    Yes I am.

        GUS
    It must really be somehtin' --
    makin' stuff up all the time.

He watches her in the rearview mirror.

        CATHERINE
    It teaches you to lie.

        GUS
    How's that?
                         20.


        CATHERINE
    You make it up, but it has to be
    believable.  They call it
    suspension of disbelief.

        GUS
    I like that.  "Suspension of
    Disbelief."

He smiles at her in the mirror.

        NICK
    What's your new book about?

        CATHERINE
    A detective.  He falls for the
    wrong woman.

He turns back to her.

        NICK
    What happens to him?

She looks right into his eye.

        CATHERINE
    She kills him.

A beat, as they look at each other, and then he turns away
from her.  Gus watcher her in the rearview mirror.

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

You can get the whole screenplay (which showcases this technique throughout, as do almost every movie or TV Series episode today) at
http://sfy.ru/?script=basic_instinct

Notice how they're talking about smoking, and a book she's writing -- but that's not what they're talking ABOUT.  The subtext is all about Relationship -- about flirting -- about what they might be or become to each other. 

The REAL conversion is off-the-nose.

Now, back to the military Science Fiction novel with a bit of a love-story squeezed in between battle scenes, or frantic preparation for battle.

In this 11th book in the series about Kris Longknife, the issue that has kept Kris and her bodyguard apart during 10 novels is solved by a woman thought to be dead a long time ago, Kris's grandmother, also a ship's captain, thought lost in action.

Turns out, she led her battle squadron off in a chase across a galaxy, managed to escape her pursuers, just barely, and couldn't get home.  So she set up a colony on a world already occupied by some bird-like aliens with whom she hacked out a treaty of sorts. 

The issue Kris and her bodyguard have been dealing with is Navy Regulations against "fraternization" -- that is an anti-bullying regulation that is there to try to prevent a "superior" officer from trading good will and privileges for sexual favors from someone of lesser rank.

So those in the same chain of command who are (whatever) number of ranks apart aren't allowed to have a Relationship.

Kris's grandmother points out that because of shifts in titles and appointments, there were a few hours when Kris and her bodyguard were not in the same chain of command, and that the grandmother is empowered to conduct weddings.

They throw together a wedding ceremony using borrowed clothing, and well rehearsed wedding participants, and take off for a honeymoon at a coastal resort on the planet.

The romantic interlude is (appropriately) mostly nudity and sex, in very high contrast to the usual scenes in these 11 novels -- all very well written sex fantasy that keeps the characters in character.  But the dialogue lacks that "subtext" technique illustrated above.

Then the novel continues into another mission, more space-battle-tactics, arriving home to more frantic battle-preparations as great-big-bad-alien-killers approach, and a final battle where Kris dredges up some old Earth sea/air battle tactics.

Between long narrations of how they can stretch their resources to defend this solar system from the approaching aliens, Kris and her new husband have several scenes alone.

The issue of "fraternization regs" is raised, and Kris calls a conference of her staff leaders.  They rewrite the regs for the sake of morale, so there are a couple more sex interludes and a few times on the space station they build in orbit, they go out to a cafe for dinner. 

On page 316, near the end of the book, before the aliens arrive to try to take the planet, they go out to a restaurant on the space station (which now serves food that's mostly native to the planet).

Jack is the bodyguard/husband, Kris has 3 titles, one of which is Admiral.  Sal is Jack's A.I. computer and Nellie is Kris's A.I. computer.

---------quote---------

I'm having dinner with my husband. Right!

"Do you know what's special about today?" Jack said, reaching across the table for her hands.

"Besides the cavalry arriving to either rescue us or go down in our defeat?"

"Forget the job," Jack growled.  "Today is our second anniversary.  It's been two months since we let Granny Rita talk us into taking the plunge.  Do you regret it?"

"Never," Kris said, squeezing Jack's hand.  "Two months.  I totally forgot about it.  I can hardly keep track of the time.  How'd you do it?"

"I had Sal do it for me."

"Nelly, why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't know it mattered to you.  I know it's a very romantic thing for you humans.  I just didn't know if it would include you, Kris."

"Yes, I'm human, and yes, I'm romantic, at least for Jack, and Jack, why are you doing all the girl things and me doing all the stupid boy stuff?" 

"You're the admiral," he said with a shrug.

Kris let out a sigh.  "I don't like that, Jack."

"But you have to.  That's what Longknives do.  They do what they have to dol."

"Well, I want to do more.  Stuff I want to do as well as what I have to do." 

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

Dinner arrives, and they talk about the food and then ...

------quote---------
"You amaze me, Jack.  You remember our anniversary and do it enough ahead of time to talk my granny ut of the fruits of her garden."

"Oh, I didn't talk her out of anything, it was pure horse-trading.  My Marines will deliver a truckload of fish offal to her and all her neighbors' gardens.  Nobody gets anything free from your granny."

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

Note how dialogue is substituted for narrative, and information is conveyed in TELL rather than SHOW.

Yes, it's fun banter, and yes I do love the styling -- and yes, after all these years of reading these novels, it's fabulous to "hear" them speak to each other so frankly -- but the dialogue is stilted, stiff, servicable, filling an interlude between lovingly detailed, subtly crafted battle scenes with some "words" that indicate they're still in love after all they've been through. 

Off-the-nose dialogue is show-not-tell -- it illustrates rather than states, allowing the reader to deduce what it means, and therefore the reader comes to participate in the story.

OK, so what CAN a writer do to finesse around these awkward moments, creating engrossing dialogue, quotable quotes, and

Why is there no way I can just rewrite that dialogue sequence, changing some words, restyling it, and bring it up to snuff for a modern Romance reader?

Here's why: the problem does not lie within this dialogue itself.  The writer is in a corner, there's a word-length limit, there has to be room for that final battle scene preceded by Kris sweating out what kind of battle plan might give her out-numbered force a chance.

The problem with this dialogue scene lies way back on page 66 to 86.

The problem here lies in the honeymoon scenes.

For this scene to be "off the nose" that honeymoon scene had to have additional "plants" inserted, images, symbols, and other devices that this scene could be fabricated from.

That inserted material had to be alluded to in other snatched moments -- perhaps gifting Kris with a certain flower on her access screen when she gets up in the morning, playing games with the calendar, etc. 

Since this is military science fiction, and this volume consists of more "logistics" problems than it does battle-tactics problems, the sexual innuendo and metaphore material has to be fabricated from shared combat experience (scenes missing here -- they don't work-out together, they don't fight each other, (they do shower together), they don't have a hand-to-hand-combat scene where the two of them are fighting an enemy.

There was opportunity for such together-scenes as their survey of the planet found other races of the natives who were not-so-friendly.  They could have found themselves in hand-to-hand-combat against unfriendly natives that they contrive to befriend.

This volume does have the more combative natives accepting positions in the space Navy to defend their planet, and Kris does consider promoting one of them to her personal staff.  So that story is there, in the background -- and was just passed over as a tell not show. 

The honeymoon scene could have been sliced in half to make room for a side-by-side or back-to-back combat scene which would provide the text to cover the sub-text in this 2-months-anniversary scene. 

There is the sub-genre of Action Romance, and this series of novels fits the description perfectly. 

The Longknife series is about combat, and Kris achieves results in combat that are ostensibly pure luck. 

There is a reason we have the term Sexual Politics and Battle of the Sexes.

This volume of the Kris Longknife series is about sexual politics.

But that issue is told not shown.

Kris's battle-commander results are LUCK.  Some characters resent her for that, others admire her, and the sensible ones stay as far away from her physical person as they can -- but they know which is the winning side in any conflict before it happens.

Watch this video of a veteran attributing combat results to luck:

VIDEO - IT'S ALL LUCK
http://youtu.be/iJsB2Xifq8c


Read Kris Longknife: DEFENDER, and watch for ways to restructure the early parts of the novel so that this crucial Romance Dinner Scene comes out with all the most powerful part of the content in subtext. 

Now find where you can use that same technique to restructure your work so that the dialogue stays "off-the-nose." 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Dialogue Part 6 - How to Write Bullshit Dialogue by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Dialogue Part 6 - How to Write Bullshit Dialogue  by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts in the Dialogue Series (yes, we'll get to "integration" of dialogue with other skills), can be found here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/dialogue-as-tool.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/12/dialogue-part-2-on-and-off-nose.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/03/dialogue-part-3-romance-erotica-vs-porn.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/08/dialogue-part-4-legal-weasel.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/11/dialogue-part-5-how-to-write-liar.html

That last one, Part 5, How to write liar dialogue, is most relevant to this post which is about something even worse than lies.

I was reading a newspaper (yeah, on paper, would you believe?) recently, in which I ran across two opinion pieces about diverse topics.  Each hung their main point on a non-fiction book.

I thought it interesting that one article pointed to the book, saying that there is something WORSE than lying, and that from the explanation I agreed! 

For the most part, you can't use this method to create dialogue because dialogue is not "speech" per se, not a simple transcription of the way people talk, but must be terse, to the point, off the nose, and  not be the author talking to the reader, but one character talking to another character.

However, when searching for a way to SHOW DON'T TELL a) the nature of a character and b) the gullibility of another character that will lead them into serious trouble, this method of dialogue generation will work very well.

Here's the book:



The thesis is that liars know the truth and are trying to cover it up, misdirect you, or otherwise convince you that the truth is not true.

Bullshitters, on the other hand, don't necessarily know the truth, and really couldn't care less what is true and what is not true.  Bullshitters are ramming their agenda into your head by saying whatever will make you do what they want you to do, regardless of whether it will benefit you, or even the bullshitter. 

The article also pointed out that the originator(s) of the bullshit dialogue may actually know it's not true, even if they don't know what the truth really is.  But those who have been bullshitted, and somehow absorb the message and become advocates of it, repeat the bullshit without fact-checking, without knowing the truth, and very possibly without knowing what agenda they are pushing!

Like gossip, bullshit takes on a life of its own.

As a result, a fiction writer can use this method of speech, discussed in the book above, to set up a plot involving character assassination.  Like a murder mystery, a character-assassination plot would have a FORM -- open form mystery, or closed form mystery.

In open form, the reader sees in the first scene who-done-it (if not how and why), and in closed form, the reader has to unravel the mystery with the detective.

Envision trying to use this "bullshit" method on Colombo -- or say, in current TV shows, Longmire.



I love Longmire's hat, and the way the camera director uses it.  But I love the underlying values of the heroic portrayal of this rural, 21st century, sheriff.  I love the modern Indian reservation and all their (rather authentic) modern day politics.  Longmire is a great show to watch -- and well written enough to learn dialogue writing by studying it, scene for scene.

So, no, a criminal is not going to get away with bullshitting Longmire!  (or Colombo).

You can also use this bullshit dialogue methodology to portray the various sides of the thematic issue you are using at the core of your composition. 

Use this blog's search-tool (on the right) to search for theme, and you'll get a lot of theme posts.  I have to make a long index of them eventually. 

The point I make in most of those posts on theme is that it is important to understand your theme, and to create characters who really believe (down to the core of their being) each side of the current arguments on that point in our current culture.

You can't fake it. 

You must actually understand where the people who loathe your own personal point of view are coming from, and for that little while that you are writing the dialogue of that character, you must be able to believe it.  Yes, it's kind of like "method acting."  You have to walk a mile in the moccasins of the characters who shun and despise your personal views, and argue their side of the matter with the character who is representing your view.

The best novels are the ones where there is no character who represents the author's personal views -- so there's no ax-grinding or polemics, no preaching, just good drama.

Which brings us to the second book I found mentioned in a printed on paper newspaper.

I wouldn't have noticed this book except for the roiling and embroiling issues raised by the SFWA Bulletin controversy, sparked by a hapless writer's blogpost (in ignorance of the SFWA issue), and then brought to sharp focus by Ann Aguirre's blog post which drew an instant splashback of several true "hate-speech" emails.  Yeah, Ann Aguirre drew hatespeech! 

Here's what I posted about this, which contains links so you can research this anti-SFR matter:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/theme-conflict-integration-part-1.html

So the following Friday, there was a #scifichat on twitter about the eruption of sexism in the science fiction community, and everyone was perfectly civil, used regular English, and tossed around some really thoughtful opinions.

It was astonishing how DIFFERENT the tone was.  The folks on #scifichat talk like the Science Fiction fans I grew up with and have known all my life.  The people directing hate at Ann Aguirre's blog post did not sound like anyone I'd ever met, and the stories the commenters brought to light of their own experiences likewise sounded like encounters out of the twilight zone.

So when I saw this article on an epidemic of hate online, and I remembered some of the nonsense language posts I've seen in comments on news articles (such as on Yahoo news, and other news posts that allow comments), I realized hate online could be viewed as an "epidemic."   These hate-language users represent one of those opinions I keep telling you that you need to include where appropriate in a story -- to use characters to present beliefs that you do not hold personally.

Here's the book on amazon:



Here's the blurb on Amazon:
Emboldened by anonymity, individuals and organizations from both left and right are freely spewing hateful vitriol on the Internet without worrying about repercussions. Lies, bullying, conspiracy theories, bigoted and racist rants, and calls for violence targeting the most vulnerable circulate openly on the web. And thanks to the guarantees of the First Amendment and the borderless nature of the Internet, governing bodies are largely helpless to control this massive assault on human dignity and safety. Abe Foxman and Christopher Wolf expose the threat that this unregulated flow of bigotry poses to the world. They explore how social media companies like Facebook and YouTube, as well as search engine giant Google, are struggling to reconcile the demands of business with freedom of speech and the disturbing threat posed by today’s purveyors of hate. And they explain the best tools available to citizens, parents, educators, law enforcement officers, and policy makers to protect the twin values of transparency and responsibility. As Foxman and Wolf show, only an aroused and engaged citizenry can stop the hate contagion before it spirals out of control—with potentially disastrous results. 

Note how many 1-star reviews it has pulled.  1-star is "I hate it." 

Look at Ann Aguirre's post (which has made her some new fans and readers!)

http://www.annaguirre.com/archives/2013/06/02/this-week-in-sf/

Look at the splashback emails she posted right at the end of her item. 

This newspaper article advanced the theory that the hatespeech you are seeing flood online venues is coming MOSTLY (not exclusively) from teenagers, and that parents need to police their teen's online behavior better to stop it.

I don't know if there's any value to that suggestion, or any truth at all to the allegation that it's teens -- but wouldn't it be (fictionally) interesting if the hate-email Ann Aguirre got wasn't from any professionals, active fans such as frequent #scifichat, or adults with considered opinions who are ticked off by the skyrocketing sales of SFR compared to the shrinking and shriveling sales of nuts-n-bolts SF?  What if she just hit a network of teens who love to "vandalize" blogposts with hatespeech and really have no idea what the subject actually is (and don't have the education to understand it even if someone explained it to them?)

Now that would make a CONFLICT for a novel -- and there's a theme integrated right into that conflict.  A Setting of Parenting -- especially single-parent parenting (the article I read pointed to single-parents who don't have TIME to police their kids)?

Can you see the various sides of the argument and how it fits into a Romance?

A woman struggling her way up in a traditionally mans' world profession, -- say widowed when her husband was killed in Iraq? -- and raising kids by herself.  Suitor #1 who has bought into the idea that single-parenting produces wayward kids.  Suitor #2 advocating casual live-together, but admiring her parenting skills - maybe more than her professional skills?  Which will she choose?  Or will she look for Suitor #3?  Or go the SINGLE route? 

Anyone watching THE GLADES?  Highly recommended -- not SF, but Detective Mystery -- Mystery-Romance.  Shows a man falling in love with a woman-single-parent-medical-student.



This issue - A Woman's Place In The World - and maybe even the very definition of woman and of "mother" - is under furious discussion in our world today, and criss-crosses the Religion borders like crazy.

This is a venue where you can set up any number of Romance Novels plotted around really hot screaming fights (Bullshit dialogue, Liar dialogue, Hatespeech dialogue) liberally laced with sex scenes.

In fact, such screaming fights would tend (in certain cultures) to skip from language to language.

Remember I LOVE LUCY, where Ricki shifts to Spanish when he gets mad?



Who are the really "hot" immigrants today?  What language to they shift into when exasperated? 

Remember, The Newcomers in Alien Nation?  There was Newcomer kid who as a teen became aculturated to Earth and joined a gang -- got himself in lots of trouble with his traditional parents for his LANGUAGE USE.




Now think about all this, and think about the hatespeech directed at Ann Aguirre not as anything to do with her work (those who HATE like that probably haven't read her books which are full of love overcoming the ugliest sides of our violent culture) -- but think of it as being a bigger problem that your readers are encountering in a lot of environments as they struggle to deal with things like being a single parent -- or dealing with kids of single parents who just aren't being properly parented, or some who are better parented than those from two-parent households.

Think of your broadest possible reach as a writer -- and see what you can do applying these dialogue techniques.

Try the classic exercise of putting two characters you know nothing about in a pitch black, can't see or touch each other, environment (a prison, a cave, an elevator in a blackout), and let them just TALK to each other.  All you have on your page is DIALOGUE - quotes, without description, just the names of the characters and all you can describe them with is what they say.

In fact, the classic-classic exercise is to write such a two-character dialogue without names, but just speech that is so distinctive the reader can tell who's talking without he-said, she-said.  In fact, one exercise is to write such an exchange in such a way that the reader can figure out which one is male and which female, without being told.

Read these books, look at these TV shows, all the while having in mind that you are going to use what you learn to construct such a "limbo set" dialogue exercise.

If you do this read/view/write exercise with enough determination, you may find yourself with the core scene of a dynamite novel.  But start first with the conversation in the dark exercise.  It's tough, but you'll learn a lot about the difference between dialogue and everyday talking.  This would work with a telephone conversation, too -- no videochat, just voice. 

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Theme-Plot Integration Part 4: Fallacies and Endorphins

If you're reading this on New Year's Day, stop and come join us for our annual Sime~Gen New Year's chat -- info and instructions on the Sime~Gen Group on Facebook and/or http://out-territory.blogspot.com

Then come back and read about how to use the basic Theme and Plot techniques I've been harping on in these Tuesday posts to avoid expository lumps.  Yes, that's what this is all about -- avoiding boring the reader by telling rather than showing.  Put all the information into the substrata of the composition, into the structural elements.  This is an advanced lesson, combining two techniques, Theme and Plot. 

Previous parts in this Theme-Plot Integration Series:
Part 1 http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-1-never-let.html
Part 2  http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-2-fallacy.html
Part 3  http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-3-fallacy.html

Before we continue with all this criticizing and negativity, let me just point out that the reason we harbor so many fallacies is that our brains are structured to arrange information in such a way that we are most likely to find what we need to know to survive -- and to do that, we just ignore stuff that doesn't seem to pertain to our lives.

This brain structure quirk has kept our species alive but it isn't necessarily pro-individual survival.

The key is of course choosing your fallacies wisely, and ditching the ones that impair your survival, and your ability to accomplish your particular purpose.

The process of ditching a cherished fallacy even has a name which has become a touchstone of writer-craft structure.  This is a very specifically formulated moment in film or novel, a singular moment in the entire life of your Main Character. 

This exquisite moment is called The Epiphany and it is the main climax of the Story, but not usually the Plot.  It is the moment the Main Character realizes where he/she has been oh-so wrong about something, that there has been a fallacy in reasoning, and/or a failure to ask and answer a question, to discover a key fact. 

The Epiphany in a Romance is usually the moment that one character finally understands why he/she has been doing these ridiculous things, taking irrational risks to save someone else's butt, or attacking some other person out of virulent dislike that nobody else can understand.  The Epiphany is "I Love You." 

Religious Enlightenment stories pivot around the Epiphany "God is Real." 

Betrayal stories pivot on "My Best Friend Is My Worst Enemy." 

Constructing a good epiphany requires first laying down a really plausible fallacy. 

One good source of dynamite fallacies is the lies everyone believes.

Here's a blog post on the business of Film Making - and Screenwriting pinpointing 4 lies that have been sold as truths to the unsuspecting.  If your main character is trying to break into an industry that markets art (any such industry from oil-paintings sold at street fairs to High Fashion in Paris) these 4 lies are wondrous sources of Fallacy to harbor and Epiphany when the fallacy is shattered.

http://www.raindance.org/hollywoods-4-biggest-lies/ 

The thesis in that article is that Hollywood is a film MARKETING industry (not film making industry).

For the purpose of studying Fallacies and how they are used in our real world so we can use them in fictional worldbuilding, we need to consider that Marketing is based on PR (public relations) which is, thanks Bernays - (as mentioned previously in this series, see Links above) a science. 

I've been talking about writing as a performing art and the business of writing as a marketing problem here for years. 
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/marketing-via-social-networking.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/03/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

And there is the 7 part series I've done on Editing that has helped a lot of beginners get their start.

This has links to the prior parts all listed at the top:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-exactly-is-editing-part-vii-how-do.html

Marketing now runs on commercials and sound-bytes, YouTube videos and Endorsements.  It used to be jingles and slogans when all they had was radio and B&W magazines.  But since Bernays came up with his herd-instinct idea driven by fear of the behavior of other humans (a wondrously fruitful fallacy for writers to explore), Marketing has been a Science. 

We have had blockbuster TV shows set in Advertising Companies or revolving around a character who writes advertising for a living.  Those characters are always rich -- there's a reason for that.  In real life, those who've mastered Advertising Copy Writing and TV Ad production are a lot richer than any mere novelist. 

Does Advertising work for Marketing because humans really do have a herd instinct?  Or does it work for another reason? 

Are humans who are conditioned to behave as individuals, who don't need or want a "Leader" because they aren't followers and therefore don't prize Leadership, who aren't subject to any herd instinct or tendency, actually dangerous? 

To whom are they dangerous?  What exactly is the danger?  Who would take damage if humans got loose?  The answer to each of those questions could be used to form that Epiphany Moment in a film or novel.

Some of the best romance stories pivot on the subconscious fear of love, leading to the Epiphany that Love Is Not A Threat, that fear of love has a fallacy at its root. 

That type of fallacy novel is about the lies we tell ourselves. 

See the post on Weaponizing Lies
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/08/dialogue-part-4-legal-weasel.html

Here is a website devoted to videogames made by Bioware and Lucasarts (now part of Disney) based on Star Wars. 

http://www.swtor.com/info/setting

Note, the whole Star Wars saga is based on the current-world's most cherished fallacy -- and nobody, but absolutely nobody, ever identifies this fallacy: that "peace" can be achieved by the process of "fighting," fighting to the death. 

This is such a whopping huge Fallacy that once you have that Epiphany that it's utter nonsense, and you no longer wonder why all these millennia of fighting for peace have not resulted in Peace On Earth, then suddenly the whole world becomes incomprehensible.  Why would you hire a politician who wants to "fight for you" -- before you have this epiphany, it's so reasonable to want to vote for the Champion who can win your rights for you, and afterwards it becomes clear how Advertising has perpetuated this particular Fallacy. 

There's at least a series of novels in finding out who benefits from perpetuating that fallacy. 

Star Wars must be the single biggest marketable product to come along selling the "Fight For Peace" fallacy as necessary in the "War Against Evil." 

Star Wars  may be bigger than Star Trek by now. 
Star Trek is based on "when we become wise" (as Gene Roddenberry always said in his speeches at conventions) we will have peace.  Peace achieved through acquiring wisdom is the theme.  But Star Wars out-sells Star Trek. 

Fighting is more fun than becoming wise.

Fighting is fun because of that endorphin addiction noted in
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/11/dialogue-part-5-how-to-write-liar.html

Endorphins are create by the body, relaxing and triggering a pleasure response. 

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

----------QUOTE WIKIPEDIA --------------
Endorphins ("endogenous morphine") are endogenous opioid peptides that function as neurotransmitters.[1] They are produced by the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus in vertebrates during exercise,[2] excitement, pain, consumption of spicy food, love and orgasm,[3][4] and they resemble the opiates in their abilities to produce analgesia and a feeling of well-being.

The term implies a pharmacological activity (analogous to the activity of the corticosteroid category of biochemicals) as opposed to a specific chemical formulation. It consists of two parts: endo- and -orphin; these are short forms of the words endogenous and morphine, intended to mean "a morphine-like substance originating from within the body."[5]

The term "endorphin rush" has been adopted in popular speech to refer to feelings of exhilaration brought on by pain, danger, or other forms of stress,[2] supposedly due to the influence of endorphins. When a nerve impulse reaches the spinal cord, endorphins that prevent nerve cells from releasing more pain signals are released. Immediately after injury, endorphins allow animals to feel a sense of power and control over themselves that allows them to persist with activity for an extended time.[citation needed]
---------------END QUOTE-----------

Humans can achieve this kind of response just from imagination.  So indeed, the "fallacy" of "fighting for peace" seems on the surface, from personal internal experience to be a "no brainer."

You FIGHT: You feel pleasure. 

Just as in the post on Liar Dialogue, Part 5 in the Dialogue Series:

You lie: You feel pleasure

You exercise power over others: You feel pleasure.

The book, You Can't Lie To Me by Janine Driver, illustrates how basic it is to the human animal to feel a rush of endorphins when exercising power over other humans.  Lying from a position of power, tricking others into doing what you want by reshaping their idea of reality, produces an addictive rush of endorphins -- it's addictive because you become immune to the effect and thus require a bigger rush or endorphins to get the pleasure hit.  You need more and more power over more and more people just to feel normal. 

Think about that concept -- read up on the science -- then think about "who" Bernays was, what his biography was, where inside him did the idea of humans as a herd to be controlled by lies come from?  Why are humans running loose without anyone controlling them dangerous?  To whom are they dangerous -- really, to whom? 

How many plots with dynamite epiphanies can you create by trying out different answers to those questions? 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Dialogue Part 5: How To Write Liar Dialogue

 Last week we reviewed several posts here on Dialogue. 

http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/10/dialogue-parts-1-4-listed.html

This is a craft technique essential to characterization, plotting scene structure, creating an atmosphere, describing settings and objects in the setting, planting clues to the mystery.  It is not a good tool for narration or exposition.  In fact, it bores the reader right out of the story when used for exposition.

One way to use dialogue for exposition (talking ABOUT the theme) is to "show don't tell" the theme by detailing scenes in which characters lie to each other.  Nothing explicates a character's stance on "right and wrong" more clearly than their lies, tall tales, and the mannerisms accompanying the lie.  When, where, to whom, and why they lie creates a totally "off the nose" exposition on the ethics and morality of the world in which the characters live.

This being Election day, it's appropriate to consider the thesis of the the non-fiction book "You Can't Lie to Me" by Janine Driver.

Here is the book:


We all know what a hot, sexy topic lies can be -- it's a core topic in every Romance.  Does "I love you" really mean anything at all?  Why is it so IMPORTANT to hear those words?  Why does it change everything in a relationship? 

The thesis of this book may have something to unlock that mystery.

I've noticed something studying the astrological natal charts of Politicians.  Those elected to major offices all seem to be having a lifetime PEAK of solar arc contacts that indicate sexiness, interest in love, and artistic abilities. 

That could be WHY we see so many politicians embroiled in sexual infidelity and exploits that are otherwise inexplicable considering the stakes they are playing for in life. 

It's about POWER.  When the heavens open up and POUR into a human being, when you reach a time in life when sheer POWER flows through you -- it can crack open any flaw in your character.  Strengths become weakness. 

If you are given power you are not inwardly trained (from the cradle, trained and disciplined (Saturn) ) to handle, that power splashes out of the appropriate internal channel within the character and damages other parts of the character.  It's a basic principle of magic and explained quite clearly in astrology.

Hence we have the saying "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely."  I've never believed that and I still don't.  But it is an observed fact -- at least when observing from the outside of people.

I don't think power corrupts.  I think that when the character hasn't been developed by discipline as a child, (being raised to "power" as the old aristocracy raised a child to be King), what we observe from the outside as a "change" (i.e. corruption of values) is no change at all.  It's the illumination of what was there. 

If the "insulation" on a wire isn't strong enough, and you run too much current through it, the insulation melts and the current leaks out and causes a FIRE - houses  burn down because of frayed wiring.

A character flaw is like that -- the "insulation" on the circuits is built during childhood by discipline and the gradual increasing of the amount of personal power the individual must manage -- taking consequences for mistakes.

A PERSON is both born and raised -- there are inherent specifications on the insulation in the internal circuitry, but that insulation can become "frayed" by "life" (by not being raised to have a strong character).

Each of us has a limit to what we can handle in terms of "power."  Each limit is different.  And one can "get away with" carrying more than the limit for years and years -- but just like frayed wiring, a power-surge can burn off the insulation and cause a short-circuit, cause a "fire."

Understanding that gives a Romance writer (science fiction, Paranormal Romance or otherwise) an edge in creating a character who deceives or manipulates, betrays or uses another character, using the power of sexuality to convince someone of a lie -- or lying to themselves.

This is a book that can explain it in such a way that a writer can write a character who is carrying way too much POWER and has become "corrupt" by it -- has lost cohesiveness in their control of power.

I do not accept most of the assumptions in this book as having much to do with our everyday reality, but it can be useful to writers creating fictional characters.  You will observe this phenomenon in real people.  It is there.  But personally, I don't believe it has to be there.  Raised well, most people will not find that they function this way.

What way?

The thesis of this book is that physiologically, those who have power OVER the person they're talking to (parent to child, employer to employee, Elected Official to Constituent, Lover to love-starved lover) feel no guilt or remorse when saying something they know to be untrue.  Men say "I love you" to have sex with a woman, and feel no guilt if it's not true as the woman thinks it must be.

They feel no guilt because they are emotionally focused on what they have to gain by making you believe the lie.

Liars who have less power than the person they are speaking to exhibit physiological and detectible mannerisms of guilt (think of a 5 year old caught with hand in the candy jar denying stealing the candy). 

Liars who have more power (President Obama making a speech right as Seal Team 6 was heading in to get Bin Laden) think only of the benefits not what there is to lose and actually don't have the brain chemicals in play that a guilty liar would. 

I don't want someone who CAN LIE in charge of any kind of power.  This book says the POWER ITSELF causes the effect that creates the ability to lie undetected.  Thus an elected official who feels powerful for the first time in his life thinks he can sneak off to have an affair then confront his wife WITHOUT TWITCHING in guilt -- confront the voters and say perfectly straight that he didn't have sex with that woman (remember Bill Clinton). 

So if this book is correct, creating a social structure that has any nexus of POWER in it anywhere (i.e. the man is king of his castle and obliged to beat his wife), actually breeds expert liars.

Therefore we have to decentralize everything and destruct all the crossing points (desks) of Power.  Nobody can be trusted to make decisions for other people, or decisions that affect and direct others. 

That's a science fiction premise you could base a long series on. 

But what if we select and raise certain children to have that strong insulation that can carry that much current and not melt down and cause a brain-fire of power-madness? 

That, too, is a science fiction premise that could support a long series of Romances. 

I suspect the fascination with Regency Romance novels is based on this, as is the Fantasy field depicting Kings, Kingdoms, Aristocracy, Barons, Dukes.  Writers have been groping for this book's premise for some time.

What happens to a PERSON when handed POWER?  How can we prevent absolute power from corrupting absolutely?

Are we helpess in the face of human nature?  Or can we produce (as bees produce a Queen to lay eggs) individuals specialized to handling power without getting burned? 

Here's the book to read to learn to write the dialogue for such a series of Romance novels.



Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg

Index to Dialogue Posts

Index to Posts on Dialogue

Here are my blog posts on crafting Dialogue (which is very different from recording real speech).

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/dialogue-as-tool.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/12/dialogue-part-2-on-and-off-nose.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/03/dialogue-part-3-romance-erotica-vs-porn.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/08/dialogue-part-4-legal-weasel.html 

Adding to this list is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/11/dialogue-part-5-how-to-write-liar.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/dialogue-part-6-how-to-write-bullshit.html

Part 7 in May 2014:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/05/dialogue-part-7-gigolo-and-lounge.html

Part 8 in August 2014:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/08/dialogue-part-8-futuristic-and-alien.html

Part 9 in October 2014
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/10/dialogue-part-9-depicting-culture-with.html

Part 10 In October 2016
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/10/dialogue-part-10-silent-dialogue-from.html

Part 11 In January 2018
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/01/writing-executives-dialogue-part-11-by.html

Part 12 In January 2018
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/01/dialogue-part-12-plotting-executives.html
Could you write the dialogue? 

Part 13 In January 2018
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/01/dialogue-part-13-writing-inner-dialogue.html
How a Character Talks To Himself as NASA Mission Control Specialist Deals With Crisis

Part 14 In April 2018
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/04/dialogue-part-14-writing-inner-dialogue.html Writing the Inner Dialogue of a Character who is being lied to.  Also see Part 5 above.

Part 15
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/07/dialogue-part-15-writing-inner-dialogue.html
Writing Inner Dialogue of Soul Mates - July 2018


The best dialogue writers I've ever run into trained in a) journalism and b) work-made-for-hire fiction markets.  (or both). 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com