An Authorized Fanfic Re-Visioning of NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR

Last week Cory Doctorow posted a review of JULIA, by Sandra Newman, which coincidentally I've just finished reading.

Novel-Writing Machines

Newman's novel is an authorized retelling of Orwell's dystopian classic from the viewpoint of Julia, the protagonist Winston Smith's lover. As Doctorow mentions, Winston thinks of the Party as omniscient and omnipotent -- "Big Brother is watching you." Viewing this society through Julia's experience, we realize it's as corrupt and inefficient as the bureaucracy of any other dictatorship. She knows how to take advantage of cracks in the system, for instance with bribery and tricks such as getting a break from her job by signing out under the category "Sickness: Menstrual." (After all, nobody checks up on that excuse.) As a mechanic who maintains novel-writing machines in the Fiction department of the Ministry of Truth, she has the skills to fix other things as well, e.g., the perpetually clogging lavatories in her dormitory. She's valued for her abilities and enjoys her work. She also enjoys frequent sexual flings despite her membership in the Anti-Sex League. I wondered how women who take those risks, aside from the danger of getting arrested for sexcrime, avoid pregnancy given that contraception is illegal. Well, there's a dodge for that, too. Many single women who suspect they're in the early stages of pregnancy seek artsem (artificial insemination). If they've actually conceived already, they're covered; if not, the procedure didn't "take." And it seems to be common knowledge that some women volunteering to bear children for the Party are already pregnant. Newman's perspective flip opens up Orwell's fictional world from these and many other angles. Everybody knows the proper behavior, language, and facial expressions necessary to stay out of trouble, and for most of them it seems to be mainly an act. In one of the few relaxed scenes, workers joke about the intricacies of Newspeak. Julia excuses her linguistic mistakes with the claim that she isn't a bit intellectual, which is true. Winston's fascination with forbidden political, philosophical, and literary topics bores her, although she maintains a facade of enthralled interest.

JULIA answers questions many readers of NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR may puzzle over. Why does she initiate a love affair with Winston, a rather stuffy man twenty years her senior? Does Big Brother, as an individual, literally exist? (Yes.) Is there really an anti-Party underground, and was its demonized alleged leader, Goldstein, a real person? (Yes.) Is Oceania really at war? Yes, we witness the bombed sections of London, though we never find out if the enemy is Eurasia, Eastasia, or neither. We also learn about the lives of the proles, including the thriving black market with which Julia regularly deals. Newman's work delves into potential features of Orwell's fictional world that he either didn't consider or deliberately left outside the frame of his narrative.

Cory Doctorow reasonably classifies this type of novel as fanfic, or as he defines it, "writing stories about other stories that you hate or love or just can't get out of your head." Whether an amateur or professional publication, fanfic expresses the drive to explore shadowed or underdeveloped areas of canonical works, or speculate on how the world of the original looks from the perspective of a different character. ROSENKRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD, which he also mentions, is a prime example of the latter.

Similarly, WIDE SARGASSO SEA, by Jean Rhys, a prequel to JANE EYRE, creates a personality and a backstory for Bertha, Rochester's deranged first wife. In Rhys's re-imagining, Bertha isn't even the name she goes by; Rochester calls her that for the sake of respectability. They arrive in Britain near the end of WIDE SARGASSO SEA. Rhys explores the question of whether she was ever in fact "mad" before being taken from her Caribbean home to England and relegated to nearly solitary confinement in a suite of upstairs rooms (not, contrary to popular impression, the attic).

Doctorow also refers to THE WIND DONE GONE, which a court decreed to be a "parody" of GONE WITH THE WIND. It really isn't, but that classification served as a defense against a charge of plagiarism. When I read THE WIND DONE GONE, I was mildly surprised that Mitchell's estate claimed copyright infringement at all. Alice Randall's book doesn't literally retell the classic novel. It tells the story of the enslaved narrator, Cynara, mixed-race daughter of Mammy and half-sister of Scarlett, with transformative references to the events of GONE WITH THE WIND. None of the white people from the latter are named in THE WIND DONE GONE. Cynara gives Mitchell's characters satirical nicknames, e.g. "Planter" and "Lady" for Scarlett's parents, "Mealy Mouth" for Melanie, "Dreamy Gentleman" for Ashley (I love that one). Scarlett is simply "the Other" or "Her."

Then there's GRENDEL, by John Gardner, wherein the monster reveals his side of the events in BEOWULF. Of course, creating variations on works in the public domain doesn't risk legal problems.

My own all-time favorite professionally published fanfic, the book I'd always wanted to write, is Fred Saberhagen's THE DRACULA TAPE (1975), a retelling of DRACULA in which the Count himself sets the record straight.

Margaret L. Carter

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

Folklore 101

At this year's ICFA, I heard a paper by folklore scholar Jeana Jorgensen and was so impressed that I immediately ordered her book FOLKLORE 101. This isn't a book OF folklore, but an introduction to the study of folklore. Jorgensen explains her field in a breezy, colloquial style but also includes an extensive bibliography of books for further, deeper exploration, should readers be so inclined. She defines folklore as "informally transmitted traditional culture." It's shared and passed on outside of official, institutional structures. Thus, while an established religion isn't folkloric, folk religion does exist, e.g., wearing saints' medals for protection or burying a statue in the yard to ensure a quick sale of one's house. Variation and flexibility characterize folklore, whereas an institutional product such as a printed novel by a known author has a fixed form (unless the author or film director releases a revised official version). Tradition need not stretch back centuries or even years to be "traditional." Moreover, the "folk" don't mean just people in preindustrial eras or present-day tribal societies. Folk groups can include hobby clubs, coworkers in an office, people serving in a branch of the military, online virtual communities, even the members of a single family—any group that shares a common culture. It surprised me to read about "personal narratives" as a folklore category. Did you know the retelling of an anecdote about your wedding day constitutes folklore within your family's tradition? Coincidentally, earlier this week I read an article about the top ten stories from their own lives people tell over and over. (Frustratingly, the article didn't list the ten topics.) Older people don't repeat stories mainly because they're forgetful; they do it because those anecdotes hold vital meanings they want to pass on to the younger generations. Just as we all speak prose, we all belong to folk groups and practice folklore.

I ordinarily think of folklore mainly in terms of verbal culture, such as songs, tales, legends, and anecdotes. Proverbs, jokes, and slang also fall into that general area. As Jorgensen's book explains, however, folklore includes many more categories, e.g., foodways, rituals, superstitions, arts and crafts, dance, holiday customs, folk medicine, internet memes, and various other human activities.

Is fan fiction folklore? Yes, although her book mentions it only once, in passing. It's produced informally, outside official, commercial structures. It exhibits variation and is communicated within a folk community. The fanfic community has its own traditions and dialect, e.g., the invention of the term "slash" for same-sex romance between fictional characters. Filk music is certainly folklore. Songs can be set to either composers' original tunes or existing music. The latter can consist of either parody or serious rewriting. The videos made by some fans by combining clips from movies or TV shows would also count as folklore, although they don't come into Jorgensen's book. So material originally produced by official, institutional, and/or commercial sources can become appropriated by folk culture, subject to variation and traditional transmission.

When does a commercial product created by a known artist become folkloric? How old does it have to be? Does it have to be in the public domain? Woody Guthrie's song "This Land Is Your Land" is probably thought of by many Americans as a folk song. Guthrie himself encouraged others to add verses. Nineteenth-century composer Stephen Foster's "I Dream of Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" was parodied by Bugs Bunny, a commercial song being "filked" by a commercial animated character. Similarly, the tune of the Civil War song "Aura Lea" was used by Elvis Presley for "Love Me Tender." There's a filk song about the Apollo 13 near-disaster sung to the tune of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." Despite Jorgensen's lucid explanations, I'm still a little fuzzy on the boundaries of "folk" transmission and variation. To cite a shift in the other direction, Jean Lorrah wrote a collection of Star Trek fanfic stories called the "Night of the Twin Moons" series—folkloric variation on a commercial popular culture product. However, her professional Star Trek novels THE VULCAN ACADEMY MURDERS and THE IDIC EPIDEMIC clearly belong to the same fictional universe as her fanfic, although with "the serial numbers filed off," as the saying goes. And the origin of the commercial bestseller FIFTY SHADES OF GREY as thinly veiled TWILIGHT fanfic is well known.

The richly diverse nuances of folk creations in the overall category of songs and stories can be endlessly fascinating.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Classics and Monsters

Following the success of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES (2009), numerous mash-ups of public domain classic novels with horror creatures and tropes were published in the few years immediately following. I've recently reread LITTLE VAMPIRE WOMEN and A VAMPIRE CHRISTMAS CAROL. Are such adaptations worth reading except as bizarre novelties? Their main appeal, judging from the types of books that have been adapted, seems to be incongruity, with fiction as unlike the horror genre as possible being transmuted by the insertion of supernatural threats into the original stories. Some others, for example, are JANE SLAYRE, SENSE AND SENSIBILITY AND SEA MONSTERS, LITTLE WOMEN AND WEREWOLVES, and WUTHERING BITES.

In my opinion, those kinds of books turn out better if they involve a certain amount of actual rewriting. From what I remember of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES, it's fun to read once but not transformative enough to comprise much more than Jane Austen's original work with zombies thrown in at suitable intervals. Granted, though, the image of Elizabeth as a trained zombie-slayer has a certain zany charm. LITTLE VAMPIRE WOMEN and A VAMPIRE CHRISTMAS CAROL, on the other hand, rewrite their prototypes more extensively, although some undigested lumps of Alcott's and Dickens's prose do stand out.

A VAMPIRE CHRISTMAS CAROL raises the question of whether the entertainment value of such crossovers fades a bit when the source text already contains elements of supernatural horror. It strikes me as not too much of a stretch to have Mr. Scrooge stalked by vampires as well as haunted by ghosts. WUTHERING BITES falls into a similar category. Vampiric motifs pervade WUTHERING HEIGHTS, with Heathcliff explicitly compared to a vampire in one line. Turning him into a literal vampire-human crossbreed, cursed by the heritage of his monstrous half, fits fairly well into the original plot. In that case, the "co-author" can't depend solely on the appeal of incongruity; she has to create a believable story with an anti-hero who inspires genuine sympathy as well as horror.

A step removed from those books, which might be considered a peculiar sort of fanfic, we find "secret histories" such as ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER, which I discovered to be better than I'd expected. The criterion for such novels is that the action must remain faithful to the historical person's biography as publicly known, while inserting supernatural elements into the hidden corners of his or her life, so to speak. Queen Elizabeth, H. P. Lovecraft, Lizzie Borden, and many others have received similar fictional treatment. A January 2022 release, THE SILVER BULLETS OF ANNIE OAKLEY, by Mercedes Lackey, will introduce magic into the career of the famed sharpshooter. I don't object to this type of fiction as long as the author does conscientious research into the historical background and treats the protagonist with respect.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Worldbuilding For Multiple Alternate Universes Part 1 - Star Trek Fan Fiction

Worldbuilding For Multiple Alternate Universes

Part 1

Star Trek Fan Fiction 

In August 2020, the creator of the Sahaj Series of Star Trek fan novels asked if she could have a scene where Sahaj tours across universes, comes to the Kraith alternate universe, and wants to Affirm the Continuity with his father, Spock, but the Kraith Spock.

I said, YES!

The Affirmation of the Continuity is a ceremony I invented for my Kraith Vulcans while writing my Kraith Star Trek fanfic series.

In the early 1970's I wrote STAR TREK LIVES!

at the same time I was writing Kraith stories (and managing the gaggle of Kraith Creators who wanted to write in my alternate-Star Trek Universe),

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





 and on alternating days I was also writing my Sime~Gen Universe novels.

I sold my first story, the first Sime~Gen story professionally published, in 1968 for the January 1969 issue of Worlds of If Magazine (edited by Fred Pohl, who later bought STAR TREK LIVES! when he became editor at Bantam Books).

That is OPERATION HIGH TIME - set at the threshold of the Sime~Gen Space Age.  You can find the issue here:
https://archive.org/details/1969-01_IF

The Kraith Universe and the Sime~Gen Universe have both attracted writers who contributed their own ideas to the Universe that I built, but both have also inspired writers to create ALTERNATE universes to mine, just as Star Trek inspired people to create alternate universes to aired-Trek's universe.

Sime~Gen is my own, original creation, but Kraith is built from aired-Star Trek and Kraith is an alternate Star Trek universe that has spawned alternate universes.

Later, I also contributed stories to other established novel-universes by famous authors I grew up being inspired by, Andre Norton and Marion Zimmer Bradley when they did anthologies of other writers creating in their universes, just as we are now doing anthologies of Sime~Gen stories by many other writers.

Writing in other people's universes, is complicated and all-absorbing. Writing in their Universe with the intention of adhering entirely to canon as defined by that original author is just like Worldbuilding From Reality -- there are things you have to learn and then account for if you violate them.

Here's the index to Worldbuilding From Reality:

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

Your job, as a writer of fiction, is to create a whole "Reality" where it seems inevitable, and self-evident, that "LOVE CONQUERS ALL" and the HEA are inevitable, real, tangible, unavoidable -- but there are obstacles to overcome.

That is a "meme" floating around in various versions of conspiracy theory commentary, which I found on Facebook having been posted by Donald Brinegar ( https://www.facebook.com/dlbrinegar ) who apparently searched for the earliest form of this image.

As I see it, the point isn't what image you see among the dots on the final panel, but rather the point is that the human brain FILLS IN LINES that are not there.

Presumably, imagination is a survival trait.

If imagination is a survival trait, imbibing fiction in whatever medium is handy (from Shaman tales to  Streaming TV) is the way to train the imagination to see the underlying patterns behind the data-dots.

You imagine correctly, you survive longer than if you imagine incorrectly. 

OTH erring on the side of "here be monster" is likely a survival edge. 

We all imagine. Train your imagination - train your kids' imagination - and get closer to surviving real threats. It doesn't take a "conspiracy" to survive.  It only takes individuals with well trained, honed, imagination, and the ability to know WHEN imagination is engaged, and when it's just data, information, and maybe knowledge.

The panel labeled "Data" is a good representation of the "reality" your reader lives in.

This is the reality you share with your reader, and it is the bedrock of all the alternate universes (or imagined Time-Travel settings, such as ancient Scotland) you create for your Characters to visit.

Readers who've grown up on fanfic, online or in 'zines, will have trained their imagination to take their perception of the aired-TV (or novel) Universe as "Data" -- and ride with you as you re-transform all their data into "Information."

Maybe after a few Seasons, or novels, you show them "knowledge" about their favorite Characters that they never guessed existed.

From watching and analyzing the Source Material (Reality, a TV show, a Novel Series), your readers have a set of lines connecting their colored-in Information-dots that is entirely their own.  Finding a writer who fills in the connecting lines the same way is a thrill.

Some readers, especially fans of science fiction, will be even more thrilled to find a writer who connects the dots in a different way than they do - they're open to a good alternate universe.

Using the tricks of the writing trade, you can lure them into a story and convince them of the solid, plausible reality of the universe with which your Characters must cope.

If you "plant" a foreshadowing dot in the first Episode, or novel, in your series, then you color in the texture of each dot in subsequent episodes, then you connect the dots with lines just the way they would, (show don't tell is the craft skill for doing lines), then you can trigger "INSIGHT" -- the connections among apparently unconnected data-dots.

Somewhere between book 20 and maybe 25, the bits of insight, the resonances, become "WISDOM " -- the understanding of your complex bundle of universes.

The reader lives in one universe, you live in another, but they have patterns in common.  Show don't tell, illustrate, use symbols.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/02/index-to-theme-symbolism-integration.html

And use unique vocabulary, to hint at resonances among your Characters' universes.  Show how the vastly different settings and cultures construct imaginary lattice works of lines between the data-dots - but we all live among the same data-dots.

Fanfic uses a fictional-reality (TV, film, books) as if it were "reality" while your original Science Fiction Romance uses the reader's reality.

To create your Aliens - you use the same data-dots as your reader but color and connect them differently to make information.

Show the reader that even with all the additional decorative color and lines, the Alien civilization, culture, and peoples have something in common with humans.  Science fiction writers generally rely on physics and math -- assuming Aliens have to cope with the same laws of physics that we do.

That might not be entirely true in some of your Alternate Universes or historical realities.  The physics might be the same (or a bit altered with a different speed-of-light, for example), but the interpretation might be different, and there might be concrete evidence to support your Aliens' interpretation.  Humans who ignore the Aliens' "Wisdom" about their world will not survive long.

So square the human and Alien off against each other, and watch them argue about what "THEORY" picture is "real" when all the dots are connected.

Flip your characters between Universes, where the rules differ, then flip them into a Universe neither knows.  See if they team up to survive, or fight to the death and create a Legend for that unknown universe.

What is true? What is real?  What "all" might Love not conquer?  Would the lovers have to reincarnate and have another go at it if they failed to summon the power of Love?

As writers, we think about point of view.

Do you need knowledge before you can have insight or wisdom?  Or can you start with Wisdom and back-figure to knowledge?

Can an Alien brain avoid imagining a recognizable image superimposed on data-dots like the Unicorn here?

Do different people have to draw different parts of the Unicorn, and argue over where the lines go?  Argue over each others' imaginary lines?

Or does each person sketch their own reality out of the scattered bits of data that they perceive around them?  And not everyone sees all the data that's there.  How much of what's there do you let the reader see?  How much do you demand the reader just imagine on their own?

There are numerous neurological studies showing how the human brain fills in the gaps in personal reality with imaginary "lines" that, after a while, become solid truth, an inescapable reality, common knowledge.  This tendency is so well known, it is used when comparing "Eye Witness Accounts" of an Event.  No two people will report it the same way.

Today the popular example is phone videos of people doing (or not-doing) things -- and the added complexity of what is termed "deep fakes" (videos cleverly altered to make it seem some celebrity said something they actually never said).  It isn't just editing with cut-and-paste tools, but actual altering of the digital recording.

Your reader's "Reality" has become malleable and a matter of opinion.

Given the familiarity of imposing imaginary order on natural chaos as the human brain is hardwired to do, how difficult can it be for you to convince a reader that your bundle of alternate universes are plausible?

Maybe your Aliens have a more accurate interpretation of our reality than we do?  Or maybe they can change it at will?  How can Love conquer that?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Fanfic and/or Critical Fiction

The latest issue of the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts includes John Kessel's Guest of Honor speech from the 2018 International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. Author of several "derivative works," most notably PRIDE AND PROMETHEUS, in which Mary Bennet from PRIDE AND PREJUDICE meets Victor Frankenstein and his Creature, Kessel talked at length about the issues surrounding fiction based on prior fiction. Derivative works include but aren't limited to fan fiction, since many professionally published novels and stories, including numerous acknowledged classics, are based on earlier works. Kessel cited the term "critical fiction," opposed to "mere fanfic" because the former engages critically with and comments on the source text. I'm dubious of this distinction, because many fanfic works deconstruct and comment critically upon their sources, often with complexity and depth absent from the original material. Not that there's anything wrong with playful speculation about "what happened next or offscreen?" and "what if things happened differently?" just for fun.

Kessel, needless to say, approves of critical fiction based on earlier works. He delivered a lengthy rebuttal to a speech presented at a past conference by Guy Gavriel Kay, who expressed disapproval of novels about historical persons—thus, by implication, disapproval of reworking other authors' stories—as lazy and exploitative. Really? Virgil's AENEID is essentially fanfic of the ILIAD and the ODYSSEY. If re-using previously existing characters and plots were always "lazy," Dante's DIVINE COMEDY and Milton's PARADISE LOST would have to be expelled from the canon. And what about Shakespeare? The vast majority of his plays derive their plots from existing sources. Kessel cites many other examples from more recent literature. "Originality" in the modern sense is highly overrated; in fact, authors before the Enlightenment and the Romantic era placed little or no value on it but typically borrowed from their predecessors. Kessel discussed the elements one should include if attempting to re-imagine or add to a prior work by another creator: Bring something new to the material; engage with, comment on, and deconstruct the source text; respect what makes the original good in the first place; "make sure your story can stand on its own." I'm not certain about that last point; some derivative works legitimately require knowledge of their source for full appreciation of the new story.

The English novel as we know it got its start in the eighteenth century partly through the fanfic impulse, which of course doesn't always spring from admiration. It can include negative reflections on the source texts. Henry Fielding reacted so vehemently against what he saw as the moral failings and hypocrisy of Samuel Richardson's PAMELA that he (Fielding) wrote a parody, SHAMELA, portraying the heroine as a conniving slut who traps her master into marriage for his money. Although a simple parody, SHAMELA still engages critically with its model, exposing (as Fielding saw it) the mercenary nature of the romance depicted in PAMELA. Fielding later wrote a more transformative novel, JOSEPH ANDREWS, giving Pamela a brother as pure-hearted and naive as Pamela appears in Richardson's novel. While SHAMELA depends for its effect on familiarity with the original, JOSEPH ANDREWS can stand on its own. How is the parodic SHAMELA not an example of fanfic? In THE INCOMPLETE ENCHANTER and its sequels, by L. Sprague DeCamp and Fletcher Pratt, a psychologist uses symbolic logic equations to transport himself and a companion into various worlds of literature and myth, such as Norse mythology and Spenser's FAERIE QUEEN. Why not classify this vintage work of fantasy as fan fiction? Solely because it's professionally published?

What about authors who write both commercial fiction and fanfic in the same series? Jean Lorrah's wonderful pair of authorized Star Trek novels about Spock's family, THE VULCAN ACADEMY MURDERS and THE IDIC EPIDEMIC, occupies the same universe as her "Night of Twin Moons" fanzine series. What's the justification for classifying the mass-market novels in a completely different category, despite the continuity among the novels and the short stories? The vexed question of the distinction between fanfic and professional fiction is pointedly illustrated by books such as the anthologies set in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover and Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar. The stories in these kinds of anthologies differ from high-quality fanzine (or, nowadays, fan website) stories only in being published commercially with the blessings of the authors of the source texts. Deborah Ross recently released a collection of her Darkover stories, most of them originally published in Bradley's Darkover anthologies. "The Death of Brendon Ensolare" re-imagines a classic Russian story transplanted to the Darkover setting, so it's doubly derivative. One of the stories, however, came from a fanzine. Of the three remaining, previously unpublished tales in the volume, the title piece, "A Heat Wave in the Hellers," is blatantly a fun piece of fanfic; it crams in all the items forbidden by Bradley's submission guidelines for the paperback anthology series. Does commercial publication automatically elevate the two last-mentioned works from "mere fanfic" to pro status? Does the difference between fanfic and professional fiction ultimately depend on whether the author gets paid?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Reviews 41, Empire of Silence by Christopher Ruocchio - Fan Fiction Styling Has Gone Mainstream

Reviews 41

Empire of Silence by Christopher Ruocchio

Fan Fiction Styling Has Gone Mainstream 

Reviews posts have not yet been gathered into an index.  Find them by searching author or title or Reviews or reviews.

Today we'll look at a huge, long, novel launching a new series THE SUN EATER Book One, Empire of Silence.

Here it is on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Silence-Eater-Christopher-Ruocchio-ebook/dp/B07693PKH7/

You'll probably want the Kindle version because the font in the hardcover is rather small and crammed -- for a reason we'll be discussing here.

So as I was reading this book (all of it; it is a page turner!), I was also involved in editing the second book in a Trilogy in my Sime~Gen Universe, and there's a relevant story in that comparison.

This back-stage story I want to tell you is relevant to spotting trends in Publishing and figuring out their origins.

I have been involved in fanfic since I was in 7th Grade, wrote novels when I was in High School and college (thankfully unpublished), and dove right into Star Trek fandom when I first saw it because friends from Science Fiction fandom (Bjo Trimble among them) were pounding the table about this wonderful TV Series (yes, it was and is wonderful!)

So I wrote the non-fiction book, STAR TREK LIVES!

precisely to introduce the general public (non-science fiction readers who loved Star Trek) to fanfic.

I aimed to rip aside the veil of contempt with which the general public shrouded all science fiction -- "kiddie crap" worthy only of comic derision.

I (and a cast of millions) blew the lid on Star Trek fanfic, and the world has changed.

As evidence that Star Trek had done something on TV that no previous Radio or TV drama had ever done, I footnoted my novel HOUSE OF ZEOR.

House of Zeor was at that time the first novel (but not first story) to be published in the Sime~Gen Series ( Sime/Gen was the logo then, but later changed by the fans to avoid the inaccurate "/" designation).

And it turned out I was correct in pinpointing the unique element in Star Trek's appeal.

I had designed HOUSE OF ZEOR to appeal to the Star Trek fans who most loved the Spock Character, and to touch the same creative nerve that the broadcast TV series touched in them.

And as predicted, many Star Trek fans wrote Sime~Gen fanfic -- at one time there were 5 regular Sime~Gen fanzines being published offset and/or mimeo.

We have most of that fanfic posted for free reading on simegen.com.

My ambition was always to bring those fanfic writers -- and their original "take" on Sime~Gen -- to the wider readership who buy professionally published novels.

And we are doing that right now -- as I'm reading the currently published Hardcovers such as EMPIRE OF SILENCE from DAW books (which also first published several Sime~Gen novels in Mass Market Paperback originals.

So as Wildside picked up the Sime~Gen backlist, and also published the several novels that got swallowed in publishing house collapses later retrieved, we went ahead with our fanfic writers to put out the first anthology of original fan written stories (some from the old fanzines rewritten, and some brand new ideas the writers have had after years of writing Star Trek fanfic).

 Now we are bringing up a masterful trilogy by Mary Lou Mendum, completely rewritten to step onto the main historical TIMELINE of the Universe, presenting the detailed narrative of how certain oddball personalities become positioned to move History forward (quite by haphazard accident, you know) while struggling to do Good For Humanity.

FEAR AND COURAGE on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014TDP8JQ/


That is THE CLEAR SPRINGS CHRONICLES - Book One is now available, and we were working on Book Two as I read EMPIRE OF SILENCE.

And the writing lesson is all about STYLE.  The fanfic style, targeting an audience of those already steeped in the mythos of a fictional world (like Star Trek, Star Wars, vs. the professional writing style targeting a broad, or gigantic viewership.

CLEAR SPRINGS CHRONICLES on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N383GS2/

Jean Lorrah, who joined Sime~Gen with her first published novel, FIRST CHANNEL (the third published in the series),

...has since been studying screenwriting craft and marketing screenplays (even won an award for it), and has fully internalized the terse, to-the-point, not-one-second of viewer time wasted or distracted with detail, STYLE required to tell a story visually.  We were taught this style by Traditional Publishing's major editors, but visual story telling requires an even higher precision styling.  Reading the SAVE THE CAT! series on screenwriting retrains the story crafting to the broadest of all audiences (the 4-bagger).

FIRST CHANNEL on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004OYUFN0/

To broaden an appeal to a wider audience, ELIMINATE DETAIL, and "BTW" events, and decorative additions (detailed description etc).  Put all that information in the plot.

The more TERSE the style, and the more clean and definitive the scene structure, the broader the potential audience.

SAVE THE CAT! on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Save-Cat-Blake-Snyder-ebook/dp/B00340ESIS/

That is true today -- but may not be true 20 years from now (say 2029).

The force moving to this direction of more lazy plotting, more larded on irrelevant detail, is the force that is making audiences for anything SMALLER (e.g. fragmenting the monolothic TV audience which had only 3 TV stations that broadcast only 4 hours a night).

That is STREAMING.  All the different mega-giants in this industry of episodic story-telling (Netflix, Amazon - retailers of fiction) are trying all sorts of different topics, formats and styles that "narrow-cast" or more directly target a sensitive area of a small audience (creating fans).

In STAR TREK LIVES! I called that "the Tailored Effect" which is what made Spock fans love the show and never notice McCoy and Kirk (and Chekov) were equally mysterious and interesting.

Nobody calls it that now, but everyone is using that basic principle -- that the narrower your audience, the more intense their pleasure and resulting "glued to the page" behavior.

In other words, what is "popular" or "Mass Market" must, necessarily eliminate exactly what you most want in your fiction payload.

Science Fiction fans are always "unusual" people -- on the tail of some bell distribution curve.  They may be at the norm in many attributes, but always have some specific attribute that is way off the charts.  Most fans have more imagination than the norm of the bell curve -- are willing to suspend disbelief to read a Romance of a human and an Alien.

To appeal to the FEW, fiction has to be "cheap to make" because it must be made at a profit.  E-publishing, and now Streaming media using digital cameras are RELATIVELY cheap to make. There are still the fixed costs of writing, editing, copyediting, and setting up the manuscript or recording the actors doing the play.

But those costs are coming down, and the means to create such salable items as e-books or YouTube video casts, are within the technological know-how and financial means of huge numbers of people.

Fanzines first arose using spirit duplicators and rapidly converted to mimeo (fans had Gestetner mimeograph machines and stencil cutting type writers in their LIVING ROOMS!!! -- equipment usually then found only in schools or corporate offices were obtained second hand by ordinary people for the hobby of publishing).

So, now, the means to professional produce and distribute (even publicize) fanfic are available to most people -- all you need to add is talent, skill, and will power.

Professional business structures (Traditional Publishers of books, Hollywood Studios), for-profit purveyors of expensively produced stories, are learning that there is profit to be made serving tiny markets but serving them well.

That lesson was the major point in STAR TREK LIVES!  People with unusual taste in fiction are profitable.

One of Gene Roddenberry's major contributions to TV Science Fiction was the art of containing costs.  He did a lot with very little money (yeah, and today that really shows, but on B&W small screen TV's it didn't show so much.)

Now the genie is out of the bottle.  Tiny markets are being well served with stories in styles that please the taste of those tiny markets immensely (but might jar the nerves of many other markets).

To learn STYLE, a writer must read lots and lots of books they really dislike.  It's the job.  The more you dislike a book, the more you can learn to make your writing into something you will like - even love - 40 years later.

What Jean Lorrah did to Mary Lou Mendum's second draft of Mary Lou's Fanfic series which we published in an offset press run of a fanzine (about 1,000 copies) has not been done to EMPIRE OF SILENCE, Christopher Ruocchio's THE SUN EATER Book One.

Jean is broadening the potential audience by sharpening the craftsmanship (cut-cut-cut -- add back show don't tell in different places -- rearrange information -- rephrase more tersely).  In the process, material cut from the fanzine version will be spun off into more stories.

That's what fanfic does best -- compress whole novel series into a few paragraphs and call it a scene in a larger story.  That is, fanfic gives readers who know the Universe thoroughly a whole new perspective on what they think they know.

Star Trek fanfic gave readers a reason to view the shows again (and again) and go to the movies several times.  Read a fanfic, go watch again and it's a totally different story you are seeing.

But to achieve this effect, fanfic lards in vast amounts of irrelevant detail, dwelling and dwelling on ideas, decoration, "depth" of characterization at the expense of plot movement.

Frankly, I like fanfic better than I like most professional fiction.

However, we now have a new audience, with new writers speaking to them about the problems of this new (tech based) world we now live in.

Christopher Ruocchio is one such writer who has plunged into creating a Science Fiction series, The Sun Eater, around a "colorful" Character (who might star in most Historical Romances!).

And to reach and grab this younger audience into his created world, he has not relied on the structures common in Gaming (which tends to emphasize plot, and opposing forces, at expense of Character Motivation).  He has instead painted his world with excessive detail.

This novel, EMPIRE OF SILENCE,

is written as if it were fanfic in a Universe you should know.

Ruocchio uses the Historical Fiction technique of a Main Character, who was the key player in changing the course of galactic history, reminiscing about his early life and how he came to be that key player.

It is the presentation mode made famous in some Arthurian legend novels, and many very early novels in that legend.  It goes back deep into the roots of human storytelling.

This is the kickoff novel creating a "world" -- as House of Zeor introduced Sime~Gen to the readers who had missed the short story in WORLDS OF IF Magazine.

But where House of Zeor is about 75,000 words, Empire of Silence is about 269,360 words and that doesn't include the appended glossary.

House of Zeor presents a whole new "language" based on perceptions that the reader does not have -- yet does not append a glossary.

In my estimation, about 25,000 words could have been cut from Empire of Silence without in any way impairing the visualization of this new galactic empire or the presentation of its historic movement.

Those 25,000 extra words are the reason the font in the hardcover is so small.  Books can be produced only in certain page-counts.  It is the job of the "book designer" to cram all the extra words into a page layout that comes out to be the exact number of pages in an integral number of "folios."  A folio is the folded over unit you can see by looking down onto the top of a book. Printing machines can make only certain sizes of these folded over units - all the books from a particular imprint run through that same machine. So the book has to be expanded or contracted to fit the machines that print it. This is the reason some books have blank pages at the back.  Think about that as you polish your final draft. The age of your target readership determines the optimum size print.

In doing such a line-edit cut, the Characterizations (and a nice Romance that is just skipped over in narrative), and the motivations as well as political concepts could have been brought to the surface in clean, unequivocal terms so that fanfic writers might pick it up and embroider on it.

Cutting, when done with deliberate craft to a specific point, can improve the art as well as broaden the potential audience which would revel in the romp of imagination.

"Deliberate craft" is what Jean Lorrah has mastered in screenwriting exercises.  You will be able to see the results when the entire CLEAR SPRINGS TRILOGY is published.  We are keeping the 3 Den & Rital stories online for comparison.

http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/CHANGE.html

http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/mlm/shiftc01.html

http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/LEGACY.html

Mary Lou added the science for improving selyn battery technology to enable heavier than air flight to her previous fanfic plot-line of "launch a Sime Center out-Territory."

At some point, we might post the intermediate draft so you can see how Jean and I cut, polished, refocused, and cut-cut-cut, to make these novels both enjoyable (as the original fanfic) and conforming to professionally published Mass Market standards.

So, by reading this novel, EMPIRE OF SILENCE (which you will enjoy and will probably want the sequels), and by comparing it to Mary Lou Mendum's fanfic on simegen.com, and to the professionally published Clear Spring's Trilogy, you can (painlessly) gain a grasp of how fanfic STYLING has become DAW Hardcover Mainstream traditional publishing acceptable.

Once you can draw the line connecting all 3 "dots" (1970's Science Fiction Hardcover, 1990's fanfic, 2020's Hardcover/Streaming) , you can make a prediction of your own about how 2040's Science Fiction STYLING will blend Mass Market with Fanfic Styles.

Write the next STAR TREK LIVES!

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Finding The Story Opening, Part 3, Should A Pro Write Fanfic? by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Finding The Story Opening

Part 3

Should A Pro Write Fanfic? 

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts in Finding The Story Opening:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/06/finding-story-opening-part-1-action-vs.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/06/finding-story-opening-part-2-avatar-and.html

The week before last, we looked at 3 novels, two widely published hardcovers from major Houses about International Intrigue, and one widely popular Fanfic novel about Interstellar Intrigue.  One of the hardcovers had a ten year old girl in it, and the fanfic has a 10 year old boy in it.

I expect by now you've read all 3 and done your contrast compare study.

I assume most reading this blog are either Romance genre readers or Science Fiction genre Readers -- and some of the readers are writers.

Last week, the author of the (hugely) popular Fan Novel, The Ambassador's Son, about Sahaj, Spock's son who turns up in Spock's life for the first time when he is 10 years old, presented us with a

http://www.sahajcontinues.com

very brief summary of what she learned subsequent to blasting out the first Sahaj story and flinging it into publication in one of the early Star Trek (ToS) fanzines - a 'zine she founded.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/12/guest-post-star-trek-fan-fiction-writer.html

Her summary of the learning curve, and final summary of what she had to internalize to produce the gorgeously polished current versions of these stories (and with stories in her universe written by others, some of the most brilliant writers in ST fanfic), brought into focus many of the topics we have discussed here, and examined in minute detail.

I recently saw some news interviews and items on Venture Capitalists looking for products to invest in.  Just like film producers, they are interested only in items that can be summarized IN ONE SENTENCE (or maybe two short ones).

The "pitch" has to be so short you can write it on a paper napkin, or the back of a business card.  An "elevator pitch" -- you can say while the doors open.

Those brief words must be the concept, and it must "haunt" the person you pitch to, and do that in such a way that they know where to find you to get more.  In other words, your Identity must be wrapped into that concept, without actually including name, address, phone number, Twitter handle etc.

Pitching is the secret.

It is the core of the dreaded "Query Letter."

Most beginning writers have an Idea and plunge right into WRITING, just too excited by their own interest in the Idea to stop and wonder why that Idea grabs them so.

That is what Leslye did with her first plunge into telling Sahaj's story.

And that, actually, is the core secret to writing vastly popular fanfic like Sahaj.

Story Telling is a craft, and all "craft" is boring to learn, just like beginning piano lessons and the incumbent practice sessions.  Parents have to tie their kids to the piano bench.  But ten years later, the college student is the toast of the dorm playing while friends dance in the hallways.

At that point, the musician is having fun, making the instrument talk for him, creating joy to gift to others, making memories and not thinking where to put fingers to make this or that sound.  The years of practice create brain synapses that allow the adult to think the song, and it comes out into the air with no awareness of what the fingers did to achieve that.

Telling stories is the same way.  At first it is laborious, boring, depressingly difficult, and you have to think about each move, force yourself to follow the metronome and hit the notes to the beat of the measure.

Yes, fiction has a beat, called pacing.  Each genre has a rhythem, a "key signature" and "time signature."  Each type of story, or novel, has a structure, like a poem.  But each story set to that music is unique.

Sahaj was one of the first "Spock Has A Child" stories.  And perhaps the first to rub his nose in it, and make him raise that child.

In other words, Leslye Lilker made a name for herself telling stories to a very specific readership segment -- the fanzine reading Star Trek-Spock fans who understood "life" is more than "adventure" and Romance running around the galaxy and writing scientific papers.

That segment of the TV audience that knew how incomplete the Galactic Hero's Adventure is without the "raise your children to be Heroes, too" part of the story read Sahaj and went on to produce many variations.

And that movement dragged many other Movies, TV shows and text-based-books into the question, "What happens AFTER the adventure?"

What happens after the Romance?

Lesley Lilker is working on how the Romance happens after the adventure, and plans to tell us some of those stories.

This is a clue about how to structure stories for our new genre, Science Fiction Romance - or Paranormal Romance - or a mixture of the two, Alien Djinn Romance.

So there are two problems all writers, beginning writers, selling writers, big name writers -- all writers -- have.  Finding the Target Audience and crafting a Narrative Hook, an Opening Scene, that will rivet that audience's attention.

After you get their attention, of course you must deliver the goods, with style and substance and satisfaction.  But no matter how satisfying your story, it will not deliver satisfaction if it doesn't first grab attention.

And you can't be polite about it.

You must "grab" attention -- yes verbal violence writ large.  You won't get it by requesting attention, or politely pinging a silver knife on a crystal glass.

Grab the attention of those (always very few) readers starving for this particular story you know and they don't.

Your opening lines and opening scene are your elevator pitch, the whole series in ONE SENTENCE.

The real implications of the payload you are about to deliver may be hidden, wrapped in symbolism and iconography as we've discussed, but all of it, including the inevitable END, and the very inevitability of that END, must be wrapped into that opening.

From then on, you unfold that package, like decompressing a program you've downloaded, then installing it in the reader's mind, then customizing it, then running that program.

Writing a story is the opposite of reading a story.

Note how Leslye Lilker's post last week starts with the oft repeated fact that everyone is a story teller.  When you answer a friend's question, "How have you been doing, lately?" you are "telling a story."  First you live the story, then you edit it down, select specific facts and couch them in specific words chosen specifically for the individual person you are speaking to.

But, though you may say only true things, you are weaving a fictional story from the facts of your life.  First you lived, step by step, through the last few weeks, then you met your friend again, and EDITED OUT (deleted) what you thought would seem irrelevant or TMI to this person.  Then you embroidered the high points and displayed them in a "light" (oh, pretty good lately -- or oh, it has been so hard).

In other words, you added in the emotional textures of your own point of view to convey to your friend the reality of your life (or to conceal it by saying things were fine when they actually weren't).  Very often, when we summarize our life experiences for a friend (or enemy) we select what to tell and what to withhold based on what we want that person to FEEL - about us, about themselves, about the world.

This is fanfic.  This is sharing a viewpoint, and as fanfic often does, "fixing" what seems to need fixing.

Everyone does this - some better than others, but everyone does it, and everyone puts effort into learning how to do it from the teens onwards.

You are a "fan" of your own life.  You are a geek who knows more details than anyone else wants or needs to know.  EDIT.

OK, since you know how to talk to friends (and enemies, bosses, co-workers, etc), why should you write fanfic of a TV show?  Why not just leap directly into professionally selling fiction, pitching at the biggest publishing houses?

Well, some people do seem to do that successfully (usually there's more to their story, but yes, the direct leap has been done successfully.)

But most people need those years of boring practice at the keyboard that produces a piano player you can dance to.

You can edit your life because you know all the details.  You can edit your life FOR a particular person or group because you know those people.  So you know the process.  You can play chopsticks.  But can you play Chopin?  At Carnegie Hall, filled with piano virtuosos, and those who believe they are virtuosos?

That "wider audience" target is the tricky part.  You can edit your universe for those you know, personally -- and you can leverage that skill to where you can edit your Imaginary Universe for an Imaginary Audience, but producing polished prose for such a large, Imaginary Audience takes practice.

To sell to those larger Publishing Houses takes practice.  Such publishers are not interested in the one-time-wonder who is presenting "my book" -- as if there is one and only one in a whole lifetime.  Such publishing houses need authors who are productive -- who know what they are doing and can produce to deadline.

In other words, those publishing houses are looking for writers (not authors) -- writers who are ready to "take the show on the road" and produce large numbers of copies of a particular performance at the scheduled time and in the scheduled place.  Like a road show.

You may adopt a number of bylines, one for each genre you write in, but each byline must be associated with a uniform product produced efficiently (not labored over).  Writing is not hard.  Learning to write is very hard.

How do you know when you're ready for Prime Time?  When you are ready to reach wide audiences because you understand how to edit your Imaginary Universe to "grab" the largest number of people who have a single trait in common, and little else?

You know you are ready for Prime Time when you can find "The Story Opening" to ANY STORY -- yours, someone else's, or just make one up and recognize it as an opening.  "Oh!  That is a springboard into a story."

How do you get to where you can create story openings that hook specific, but very large, audiences?

You work in universes that hook very large audiences.  That is, you read, write, and discuss, analyze (beta read) fanfic in a universe that has an audience that you want your fiction to reach.

You either pick an existing TV or movie fanfic base to join, or you create one by self-publishing.  Self-publishing works best if your byline is already known to an existing fan base, but studies have shown that fanfic readers don't easily follow their favorite fanfic writers into prof fic.

One beginning professional writer who learned a lot from this Tuesday blog series, took my advice and absorbed and studied the SAVE THE CAT! series by Blake Snyder, whose books explain the structure of Blockbuster Movies.

https://www.amazon.com/Blake-Snyder/e/B00LWI2JXA/

Note this series is mentioned in Part 1 of Finding The Story Opening.

Recently, after years of studying SAVE THE CAT! and writing to the "beat sheet" revealed in those books, she Tweeted me:

-------------
Kimber Li @KimberLiAuthor

I can't watch a t.v. show now without seeing something I need to fix, like the structure fell apart in the second act. @JLichtenberg
---------------

Well, that's how you know you've made the leap over the vast divide between reader and writer.  You can't not-edit, can't not-see flaws.

Sometimes millions spent on advertising can push a product to the top sales rank, despite flaws.  But it costs less to push a product with fewer flaws.  However, no product is worth pushing at all unless it is delivered on time.

Kimber Li also asked, some months ago, about writing fanfic, especially after having begun to sell.

It used to be that if a Major Publishing House discovered you wrote fanfic, they would never buy from you.

As you have noted, if you've been reading this blog a while, I was a professional writer before I began placing Star Trek fanfic stories in the ST:ToS 'zines - my Kraith series.

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

At the time, all the members of SFWA I knew advised me not to use the same byline on fanfic as on profic - such as my Sime~Gen Series

https://www.amazon.com/Sime-Gen-14-Book-Series/dp/B01N4SG08Q/

But I did it, anyway.  Now the world has changed, and a number of writers are widely known for both prof and fan fic.  Writing fanfic is not a stigma anymore.

The reputation of "geeks" "nerds" and fen has changed.  Maybe STAR TREK LIVES! had something to do with that.

Now ponder what Leslye Lilker wrote last week, about theme.

If you can't state your theme in one sentence, you will not have an anchor onto which to hook other elements.  In other words, theme is the glue that holds the story together.

Theme provides the title, and IS the hook for your audience.  It is the story in one sentence - it is the version you can write on a napkin or business card.

The same Imaginary Universe you have created (from scratch or from some Movie or TV Series) can produce Characters, Situations, Settings and THEMES for any audience.  You edit your whole Imaginary Universe to extract the particular details that will intrigue your intended audience, and leave out the rest.

Can't emphasize that enough -- Art is as much about empty white-space as it is about the words.  Music is not music without "rests" -- the little pauses between beats.  What you leave out depends on your audience.

"Steamy" Romance gives every detail in a sex scene.  "Adventure Romance" just "goes to black" and hard-cuts from first caress to the shocking awakening in the morning when the bad guys attack.

How do you know what to write and what to leave out?  By knowing your audience.

Like Kimber Li noted, if you study Film (via SAVE THE CAT!) then go to movies, you will see things you never saw before.  Those who can't see those things will still enjoy the film.  So study the audience.  Instead of watching the film, watch the people respond -- listen to the breathing, (and watch for secret-cell-phone texting because they're bored).

Those people may be your intended audience, people to buy your books in the genre of that film.

Find something like that - a film, TV Series, Netflix Original, Google to see if there are published stats about the size of the audience, pick a film or series that leaves you bursting with IDEAS - write fanfic for that audience, showing them how you would fix the flaws you see (that they don't) and how much more enjoyable the story would be if the flaws were fixed.

That's what Sahaj does for ST:ToS fen -- note that years later, they provided Kirk with a son, and Spock with a sister (they did read Kraith, you know).

The lack of family, of ancestors and descendants, of cousins and wives, was seen by that particular audience as a FLAW.

It was not considered a flaw by Hollywood-circa-1966.

Science Fiction was thought to be a genre that only teenage boys would enjoy, so it had to be devoid of complex emotional webs creating tight-knit family structures.  It had to be full of danger, fast movement, and the specialness created by being THE FIRST to ever see or discover something.

Hollywood had no idea that Science Fiction was always and would always be the Literature Of Adult Women, and that the lack of Romance would be considered a flaw not a feature.

Hollywood has learned, since then.

But as I have pointed out, Romance readers and fans are among the best educated people and have stringent requirements for their fiction, just as science fiction readers do.

How does a writer meet such requirements?

Practice.  Boring hours of practice.

If you study how to teach piano, you will find that there is a method that gets you to effective and efficient practice.  The method is to just play-through your mistakes -- don't stop when you miss a key, but rather just keep the beat and pick it up.  Then repeat the whole piece or at least a section as a single whole.

That method is akin to learning writing by writing fanfic.

Pick a fandom that contains the readers you want to buy your books.

Pick a skill to practice.

Now ask yourself why you like this fictional universe?  A portion of the fans of this universe will like it for the same reason you do - most have other reasons.

The people who like it for the same reason you do are your Readership.

Show don't tell them why you like this universe - and that is your theme.

A professional writer is not wasting time or creativity writing fanfic if the fic being written practices the skills that still come awkwardly.

I was not proficient at Theme-Everything-Integration -- all the various series of Integration posts I've done here to explain what I've learned -- when I wrote the first Kraith story.

Here is the opening I concocted way back then.

----------quote SPOCK'S AFFIRMATION----------
http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/kraith/kc001/kc01_03.html

The Admiral's office was quiet, efficient and so neat it resembled an unoccupied hotel suite. Admiral Pesin sat with both hands on his desk calmly reviewing the curious orders he was about to issue. In the guest-chair to the Admiral's left, sat a Schillian security officer. The Schillian looked rather like a man-proportioned toad, or perhaps lizard. The Star Fleet uniform pants and tunic only emphasized his differences.

          Presently, a transporter beam built two figures in front of the desk. Captain James T. Kirk and his First Officer, Commander Spock, of the USS Enterprise, presented themselves with proper formality and then Admiral Pesin introduced the Schillian as Lieutenant Commander Ssarsun of Star Fleet Security.

          "Gentlemen," Pesin said, "be seated."

          He looked from Ssarsun to Kirk and finally to Spock where his gaze became unreadable. After a long thirty seconds, he said, "Commander Spock."

          "Yes, sir."

          "It is . . . with regret I must inform you that Sarek is still missing, and the Vulcan authorities insist that, though there is still hope, your father must be declared legally dead."

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

But somehow, mysteriously, I did manage to get most of the required elements into the first few paragraphs.

A) The best thing about Trek was ALIENS
B) The Most-Best thing about Trek was TELEPATHIC ALIENS
C) The missing element about Trek was Vulcan, and Family

Spock is being called upon to step up into his father's sho
es.  But it is complicated.

That opening hooked legions of fanfic readers when it appeared in T-Negative, and as with Leslye Lilker's mailbox, my mailbox burst with Letters (typed on paper, sent in an envelope with a stamp) explaining A) why this is a great story and I love it, and B) why this is a terrible story and just plain all wrong, or C) how to fix it.

"How to fix it" is fanfic.

And fans of Kraith wrote a lot of fanfic in the Kraith universe.

I used what I learned to craft the opening of House of Zeor, which was the first novel in the Sime~Gen Series, and fans have written a lot of Sime~Gen fanfic, most of which is professional quality writing, and is now being published in the Sime~Gen Universe by a professional publisher.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014TDP8JQ/


https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N383GS2/

So fanfic breeds fanfic.

If you want to create a Classic, a series that other writers will be inspired to adopt and write in, then writing fanfic is the best way to learn how it is done.

The fans of the Intellectual Property that turns you on will be able to tell you what you do right -- and wrong -- in creating in "their" universe.

You may not learn writing, but you will become proficient at executing the craft.  It is practice, and only practice (with feedback just like the piano teacher correcting the angle of your wrists, and the straightness of your back) performing before an audience (a recital) can bring your craft skills to concert pitch.

Once you have found how to captivate an audience and inspire them to their own Art, you will be ready to take your show on the road.

One sign you've made that transition from passive consumer to active producer of fiction will be, as Kimber Li noted, that you can't not-see the errors that others make.

We used to use a blue-pencil to mark up books as we read -- today, on Kindle, you just highlight and sometimes make a note.  No writer can resist editing someone else's work.

The most compelling fiction to "edit" like that is fiction that somehow strays from the THEME showcased in the opening.

The story opening is the theme.  Any detail or scene or character that strays from that theme will be seen as an error to be fixed.  Readers may be aware of the "error" and lose interest because they don't understand the story, but writers will just wade in and fix the "error" -- recast the Character, rewrite the dialogue, imagine missing scenes.

Find the story opening by asking yourself why you want to write this story.  The answer to that question will be the reason readers want to read the story.  And it will be your one-sentence pitch to an editor who wants to publish the story - because the readers of that imprint like that kind of story.

You get to Carnegie Hall by practicing.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Reviews 31 - Dave Bara The Lightship Chronicles

Reviews 31

The Lightship Chronicles

by

David Bara

I have not yet done an Index Post listing all the previous 30 Reviews posts, but you can find most of them by searching for Reviews in the search slot for this blog at the right.

This Review of Dave Bara's Lightship Chronicles series might also belong to the series Marketing Fiction In A Changing World.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/05/index-to-marketing-fiction-in-changing.html

We have been discussing the impact of Star Trek and Star Wars -- and other hugely successful movies and TV Series such as Avatar and Stargate -- on the science fiction novel field.

If we can figure this out, we may have an inkling of what to write now that will become hugely successful 10 years from now. Dave Bara may have hit on one important change that is still ongoing, and I am recommending you read and study The Lightship Chronicles.

In the 1930's and 1940's, "science fiction" was an obscure field, barely represented in public or High School libraries, not even known by the general public as existing.  The few dozen writers and few thousand readers just buzzed along in private, much as fanfic started in the 1970's.  When ordinary people (Muggles) heard about what we read, they greeted the entire thing with scorn.  The comic strip, Dagwood, got more respect.

On this blog, we have been analyzing what we, as Romance Writers, can do to convince the "general public" that the Romance genre in general, and science fiction romance in particular, are worthy of respect.

Meanwhile, that general public's respect for our field may actually be rising.

Gini Koch's Alien Series - that I've been raving about on this blog for years - is still prominent and the series is growing.

I've noted several other works that touch the edges of "The Love Story" -- novels about interstellar war, Aliens, dimension travel, or paranormal inter-dimensional travel.  Many writers, and their editors, are dabbling at the edges of the depicting of a Universe where Love Conquers All, producing a Happily Ever After.

So we are marketing fiction in a changing world, and some editors are willing to publish novels that would never have been accepted for Mass Market in the 1970's.
And as usual since then, DAW Books is a leader in changing the publishing landscape.

DAW has now brought out three of Dave Bara's Lightship Chronicles novels.

IMPULSE
STARBOUND

DEFIANT

Find them at
https://www.amazon.com/Lightship-Chronicles-3-Book-Series/dp/B01FZ55770/

These are space-war, military science fiction with a Star Trek like leap into an era that emerges from what technology might do with today's science.  Now, we see that technology only via Mathematicians speculating and Physicists dreaming up experiments.

That speculative leap into a future where humans live with the results of applied science creating impossible technology  is the hallmark of great science fiction.

The science makes the fiction.

But fiction is about Characters living through a Story - in spite of, or because of the Events that happen, the Plot.

Human Characters have the same character flaws (and strengths) that the readers do.

Human Characters make mistakes, boast egotistically, embarrass their parents, offend everyone, ingratiate themselves, and regularly pull of miracles -- just like you and me stumbling through Life.  Human Characters fall in love.  Learning to tame the force of Character we all bring to bear on Life is Story.

The Story is the Character Arc where the Character learns an abstract lesson, a moral, a rule of thumb, and gains maturity.

If you examine the early Star Trek fanfic, you will find a type of Character drawn with broad strokes, who is painfully close to the typical reader of such fiction.  That Character was branded "Lt. Mary Sue" after the lead Character in an particularly egregious example of the sub-genre.

Today, we refer to such stories just as "Mary Sue" stories.

Now, oddly enough, I am a blatant Mary Sue fan.  I loved the stories as they were published in T-Negative, and I still love this type of story.  My definition, therefore, may differ from that in current usage.

One feature of the Mary Sue Character is the absurdly long and varied list of accomplishments, talents, abilities, and credentials Mary Sue has garnered before she graduates from Star Fleet Academy at an age younger than others.

She skips ranks, solves any problem with apparent ease, and because of her precocious accomplishments, she has little respect for authority.

At the same time, Mary Sue has an emotional maturity somewhat below her age-group, does not understand people and can only evaluate any situation from her own point of view.  She has no clue why people don't trust her and admire her.

For the most part, people define the "Mary Sue" as a type of story not worthy of their respect.

The reasons the Mary Sue story does not garner admiration and respect center around how "unbelievable" these Characters are -- the Character is "unreal."

Mary Sue is implausible.

That is the exact complaint readers have about Romance -- Love At First Sight is implausible, Romance is not realistic, and Love always Loses -- there is no such thing in real life as Happily Ever After.  Maybe, Happily For Now might happen, but not as a result of Love Conquering All.

We all know how many people regard Romance, but most of us do know a few people who have experienced real life romance, fought through vicissitudes and then lived many decades "Happily Ever After."  Real life examples abound, and we are aware of a few.

In real life, many people look at a "Happy" couple and imagine the discord they keep private.  Then they conclude the couple is not actually happy.  That turns out to be true enough times that people conclude happiness does not exist.

So, if we know that Romance does indeed strike, Love forges Couples amidst vicissitudes, and those Love-tempered Couples do have good, long years of "Happily Ever After" then why is Mary Sue implausible?

Many people do not know a Mary Sue in real life.

I, on the other hand, have met quite a few, dealt with them, done business with them, and watched them try to cope with not fitting in.  So I do not find Mary Sue implausible, just as I don't find Romance implausible.

I noted this disparity of experience when Star Trek: The Next Generation introduced Wesley Crusher.  Fans reacted explosively.  Some adored him and were relieved to see such a Character on TV -- someone they could identify with.  Others loathed him because he is so implausible -- no real person could be like that.  Others objected to the Character being introduced into the show because it struck a sour note -- this Character does not belong in this Show.

I suspect Wesley Crusher was the first presentation of a Mary Sue Character in a Professional venu -- and not a mere Mass Market Paperback, but a TV Series.

At first, in 1987, I didn't notice anything odd or strange about Wesley Crusher (I was already a Mary Sue fan for life) -- I've known a few real people like that and found them very amenable and not at all remarkable.  But I understood the objections when I heard them, but disagreed.

The Character Wesley Crusher is probably the best known example of what has become known as the Marty Stu -- the male version of Mary Sue.  Spock, as a child, must have seemed like that to his peers.  He outgrew it, as most do.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MartyStu

But through the ensuing 1990's, we did not see this type of Character turn up in Mass Market paperback Science Fiction or Romance.

Throughout the 1990's, the online communities were growing faster than the technology.  The fans of my Sime~Gen novels were, likewise, writing millions of words of fanfic set in my universe -- at first on paper, and then online in various hosted communities.  We moved several times before launching our own simegen.com.  So I had a ringside seat during this transition, and now host classic Star Trek 'zines on simegen.com

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

Today, fanfic.net and others host a wide variety of fan writers enlarging on stories they share with others.

In fanfic, the Mary Sue and Marty Stu stories flourished.  Very likely, people enjoy writing them more than others enjoy reading them.  The scorn is just as hot now, but the Character Type is still common.

And now, after 2010, we are seeing the Marty Stu Character turn up in Mass Market.

Gini Koch's Kitty Kat (ALIEN SERIES) is a more tame, plausible, believable Mary Sue because, written from inside Kitty's own mind, we see her uncertainty, her struggles, her misunderstandings, her mistakes, and flaws.  Kitty Kat is aware of her own flaws -- and that is a signature of Maturity.  Kitty Kat has out-grown her Mary Sue years when we first meet her.  But we can imagine what a pain she must have been as a kid, and so we understand why her Mother didn't tell her "everything."

Kitty Kat apparently grew up among Marty Stu Characters, and that spurred her maturation.  And she has matured markedly through her adventures in this Series.  She's adorable and lovable because she's not a Know It All and is accepted by others for her unique Talent.

In the last six or seven years, I've been finding Marty Stu Characters strewn through Mass Market paperback Science Fiction.  Gradually, the "wraps" have been taken off this Character, and even so he is still selling books.  Yes, people buy books to follow a Character.  Create the Character for your Readership and it will sell books.

Which brings us to the Magic of creating a Character that readers remember for years even when they don't actually remember that they remember.

Picking a book to read may merely be a matter of liking the cover art, or something about the packaging seems similar to some other book which was a pleasurable read.  It is very intangible.

And somehow I did it.  I picked a book without remembering the writer's name, or the prequel title. I started reading convinced I'd never read IMPULSE by Dave Bara.

I was several chapters in when the story finally twanged my memory -- and it was not the main Character, Peter Cochran, that reminded me.  It was a secondary Character -- and not even that Character, but his technology, that had lingered in my mind.

In IMPULSE by Dave Bara, we learn about an FTL ship exploring the cosmos -- encountering hostiles, fighting frantically and being nearly beaten.  This FTL ship gets its technologically advanced weapons and propulsion systems via a group of humans called Historians.  I didn't remember what they were called, but I did clearly remember the one feature that distinguishes Bara's universe from all the other Military Science Fiction, and galactic war stories I've read in between.

And therein lies a lesson for us all.  Hollywood wants, "The Same But Different" -- and this is the reason why.  I remembered the Historian, his name and his Character, but mostly his personal transportation -- a whole ship attached to the bigger FTL ship and almost indistinguishable from it.  It's a whole private apartment, loaded with technology and know-how the main ship does not have access to.

That unique feature of Bara's Universe stuck with me.  It's fabulously interesting, and the secondary Character (the Historian) is the one who has my interest (as Spock riveted my attention no matter what Kirk ever did).

This is a lesson in how to write for a market.  Lightship Chronicles is "just another" galactic war story -- except for The Historians.  It is the same, but different from all others.

That alone is a good reason to read this series if you want to write Science Fiction Romance.  But another reason that you'll enjoy the Lightship Chronicles is the classic, indefatigable Love Story.  There is Romance in there, but it is a Love Story with a lot of friction, and a lot of reasons why this Couple can never make it to Happily Ever After.

The main Character, Peter Cochran, is Marty Stu.  He is "royalty" from a planet that is trying to forge a union of planets to stand against the current attackers.  He has "intuition" measured at the top of human range, but he makes mistakes that get dozens of those under his command killed.  His bridge station is under the command of the resident Historian, and he has a security clearance above the Captain's.  He is a classic Marty Stu, by accident of birth and by on-paper accomplishments.

His list of heroic accomplishments would win him respect, but he's just too implausible for his compatriots.

But he is clearly on his way to maturity.  We are seeing through his eyes as he is attracted to the one particular woman who is an awkward fit for his personality and position in his society.  He values her for the exact attributes all women want to be valued for -- accomplishments not appearance.  She is beautiful to him because of her accomplishments, and she just can't see what's happening.

The Marty Stu motif is born out in STARBOUND by an awkward and inept writing style absolutely conforming to the average fanfic.

This is Hardcover/Mass Market publication upholding the best of the fanfic style.

The first thing I noticed in STARBOUND was the inept use of dialogue.  I recommend studying this novel just for the dialog lessons you can learn from this.

1. Dialogue is used where narrative should be, to inform the reader.  The Characters tell each other what the Characters already know.

2. Dialogue is used where symbolism and action (in screenwriting, this is called "business" -- little things the actors add) should be.  The Characters argue at length during action scenes.

This second item is really big because it both conveys and undermines Peter Cochran's Character and Situation.

This is a military exploration vessel, armed to the teeth with the latest weapons, going into enemy Territory on a stealth Extraction Mission (which they never bother to mention again or complete).

In each and every instance in the opening chapters, where an official order is given, whoever that order is given to answers back with an argument or objection (that is ridiculously inappropriate).  This dialogue exchange actually is there to inform the reader what is going on - but it is typical fanzine writing in that the craft-tool of Dialogue is substituted for Narrative.

It would work if in only one instance an order was objected to, but it is in every single instance.

So you have an illustration to study here explaining to you exactly why we keep saying "SHOW DON'T TELL" -- and that whatever you show and whatever you tell, it all must explicate the THEME.

The way dialogue is used in these action-opening chapters (space battles etc) shows us this is a lax, non-vertical chain of command where laid back argument and discussion is encouraged.  We are shown that Orders are not Orders, and the life-or-death-by-the-second decisions are not really life-or-death (except people die because of the discussion intervals).

But we are TOLD - that this is military exploration on a rescue mission, a stealth extraction of spies.

What we are shown does not match thematically with what we are told.

You really must study these three novels, and the market shifts their publication indicates.
Read the review praises in the front page in the LOOK INSIDE feature.  Every sort of reader is loving these books.

OK, the next fanzine structure issue in STARBOUND comes around page 100, where after they get the ship shot up and so damaged it has to go back to repair dock, Peter Cochran and his woman are sent to testify about their losing their previous ship (in the novel IMPULSE).

Now we go to Peter's social duties as a royal heir, and he goes home and gets bumped up a rank, then off to testify on another planet.

This interval is a drastic shift of pace -- it is another book entirely -- with totally different themes and conflicts.  The plot connects but the rest of everything just does not go together artistically.

This kind of "lurch" in pacing is typical of fanzine writing.

It is also something I rather enjoy reading -- fanfic has its charm.

But I am seeing this in Mass Market Paperback -- knowing what my editor would have done if I'd ever turned in a book structured like this -- and I know I'm looking at the taste of a readership that has grown up on fanfic.  They know real Marty Stu people, and believe they exist and can grow up to be mature and respectable.

In our current world, you can be born with a silver spoon in your mouth, score incredible successes before age 30, be an utterly immature and abrasive idiot in your 40's, and come into your 60's scoring even bigger successes while displaying mature Character.

Mature Character is an independent variable from Success in our world.  So readers find the Mary Sue and Marty Stu Characters acceptable, and even respectable in their adult form.

We live in a whole new world.  We are writing for a whole new readership.  Evidence here indicates they can be convinced that Love Conquers All and leads to Happily Ever After.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com