Granddaughters And World Building

Folks:

I agree with Linnea about Magic Lost, Trouble Found -- it's a page-turner with everything and the kitchen sink tossed into the worldbuilding mix.

I got my computer fan replaced and I'm back in the saddle again! (remember Roy Rogers?)
I've been talking about worldbuilding -- the writer's tool for creating an alternate reality background for the story to unfold in front of, for some time now.

Many writers just hurry through that part of preparing to write, because it's tedious, often irrelevant, and will never collect them any money or glory.

But the truth is -- world building is the writer's tool for drawing a reader into a story, especially a romance, and doubly-especially a romance that involves star-crossed lovers or the divinely inspired love that can reach across a cultural gulf, or in our case a species gulf.

The Alien Romance genre actually goes farther to define LOVE in an operational way that readers can use in their mundane lives than any other genre I know of. Love isn't "human" -- love transcends humanity.

That lays a big responsiblity on the romance writer who's just trying to make a living.
Think! As you craft this story, think about the young women and men who will read this story, who will feel these emotions with the characters, who will remember those characters' names their whole lives long as "symbols" of the philosophies they stand for.

Think about the lessons they will derive from walking a mile in this character's moccasins.
Yes, the background world building carries the thematic message of the story more strongly than the characters themselves. It's not BECOMING the character that impresses a story on the readers' dreams -- it's that mile they have to walk in the character's moccasins, feeling every stone through the thin soles.

What draws a reader deep, DEEP, into a story is the philosophical match between the character, his/her internal conflict, clearly reflected in his/her external conflict, crystal and pristinely reflected in the world surrounding the character.

The way all these levels of the artistic creation match, go-together to bespeak a certain view of Life The Universe And Everything -- matters of ultimate concern -- (astrologically 12 House matters) -- that makes that world real to the reader.

For an artist to pull that trick off, the artist must be aiming his/her creation at a very specifically defined audience, readership, market. Just as in conversation, you must take into account what the other person is thinking, feeling (mood), wanting, needing, believing, before you phrase your utterance.

Ask the boss for a raise when you've just spilled hot coffee in her lap and see what happens next! Take her clothes to the cleaners and have them back spotless in an hour and you won't have to ask.

Do the same when you create a story -- take into account who you're talking to and what else they have distracting them and craft your story accordingly.

Most romance readers are either young and dreaming of creating their own family -- or currently raising kids and dreaming of ways to make it easier.

When you craft a story and build the world to house that story, you are talking to that audience, just as you talk to your boss (and make no mistake, the reader is your boss, the reader signs your paycheck.)

So you want to start with a statement or image that makes sense to the reader before you dive off the deep end into aliens and falling in love across vast gulfs.

That one thing that almost all Alien Romance readers have in common -- almost all readers, actually, -- is FAMILY.

Now, here's an aspect of worldbuilding we haven't discussed at much length. FAMILY.
Note that Star Wars is a multi-generation family drama not unlike Dallas, the TV show was.
A popular Romance sub-genre was the Gothic -- where some young woman down on her luck inherits a haunted house with a tall dark stranger next door.

INHERITS being the operative word -- grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. Where there's a past, there's a future. Romance is really all about potential family.

So I have a real-life story to tell you to make my point here about how to make any alien environment you build accessible (understandable on an emotional level) to your readers.
Read this story with an awareness of WHAT you already know that you use to interpret and visualize what this story means. And simultaneously consider WHAT to invent for your alien world to fill the niches of these things you already know about our reality.

What you choose to put in those niches will delineate the philosophical statement which is the theme of your work.

Remember, your readers will use what THEY already know to interpret what you write, to interpolate facts between your words as you do when reading this story. Leave the gaps they need, but also fill ones that tickle the mind with a new way of looking at the world.

This morning, my daughter called while driving her daughter (4 3/4 yrs old) to an appointment.
My daughter said right off that she had just heard The William Tell Overture on her car radio and she instantly thought of me and how it was past time she should call me.

Why did she think of me? Because I'm a Lone Ranger Fan of the first water, and she grew up well aware of that (as well as Star Trek -- her first word after Orange Juice was Captain Kirk).
So we talked, and she told me several too-too precious stories about my granddaughter who had been nagging her to talk to grandma and grandpa. I won't lay them on you.

Then she told me that at a garage sale a couple weeks ago she picked up for $5 a video camera you can hook to the TV set and see yourself. Immediately, MY GRANDDAUGHTER (here is absolute proof of the relationship!) seized on the camera, set up a vanity table chair as a stage and pretty backdrop, put her Barbie Dolls on it and proceeded to move them around watching on the TV and telling Princess stories.

At her age, I wrote words on paper (even if nobody but me could read the squiggles I thought were writing), my granddaughter tells stories in video! But stories are stories -- I've spawned a PRODUCER!!! Maybe she'll produce one of my unsold scripts she finds when cleaning out my house after my funeral. (Now there's a Gothic tale untold!)

Then we discussed what to get this kid for her birthday. One of my presents to her is this blog which occurred to me when I spoke to her on the phone. Maybe she'll stumble over it when she's a teen surfing the web for romance novels.

Jacqueline Lichtenberghttp://www.simegen.com/jl/