Theme-Plot-Character-Worldbuilding Integration Part 11 - Arranging Marriages

Theme-Plot-Character-Worldbuilding Integration

Part 11

Arranging Marriages

Previous posts in this series for advanced writers on blending individual techniques so readers never notice you did anything are:

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

The previous entry in this series of posts is about How To Marry A Billionaire.  It used to be "millionaire" - but, inflation, you know.

The symbolism of "rich" is desirable not just for looks, but prowess.  The self-made billionaire is sexy because he/she can provide for children and ease the burden of motherhood with maidservants etc.

Considering what happens when a billionaire comes into the spotlight of the media, do you really want to be the spouse of such a hot property?

Hmmm.

Check out this series of posts on symbolism:

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

The billionaire is the one-step-solution to all life's problems rolled up into one symbol - being rich.  Likewise the Duke, the King, the Prince -- all the royal titles or heirs to such titles come with the implication of rich, and an easy life.

But novels are not about living EASY.  Easy is what happens after the novel is over - (or the series) - in the HEA part of existence.  To get to the HEA, you gotta suffer!  And you have to work for that ending, really work, searcher your soul, change your habits.  (My Fair Lady!)

So to marry your Soul Mate, you have to know your own Soul.

Generally, readers (in any genre) don't buy a book to learn how to search their own Soul, but will remember a book that illustrated (in show don't tell) how to determine what you really want in life.  You only know you got the right answer decades later, when having what you want has gone on-and-on until it becomes the norm.

Novels can happen at the point where that norm is threatened, and the Characters must question whether they made good choices as children.  Most often, those characters, slogging through those confrontations, are ancillary characters, supporting players (not spear carriers or red-shirts).

So here we'll study how the World you build shows (without telling) how to determine what you really want in Life.

I suggest you watch 2 TV Series, one on Netflix and one on Amazon Prime, imported TV Series with English subtitles (that aren't always accurate).

1. Srugim on Amazon Prime

2. Shtisel on Netflix

If they aren't there when you read this, Google around a bit.  They are popular for a reason.  But companies are playing games of keep-away against viewers these days.

We discussed Srugim here
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/01/cozy-science-fiction-part-1-by.html

The world it is set in might as well be another planet full of people who aren't quite comprehensible to normal humans.  They march to a different drummer.

In Srugim, the Characters in the drama are all young people searching for a true mate, and over the course of 3 seasons, most of them settle down.

In Shtisel (the word is a family name), we see a whole family with grandparents, retirement age parents, and adult children with young children approaching marriageable age.

It is a family drama set in a world most viewers have to learn as they go, but since it is not an American made series, it assumes the viewer knows things Americans probably don't know (or think they know the opposite).

Shtisel has been hailed as a breaker of stereotypes, and as such is worth studying carefully -- because writers of Science Fiction/Paranormal Romance are breaking stereotypes.  Most of the blow-back against the HEA ending is coming from that source -- people are comfortable inside their "world" composed of stereotypes, and find it painful when you break them.

The Theme of Shtisel might be stated thusly:

A) Ancestry Matters
or
B)  To maintain coherence, a family must change with the World they live in.
or
C) No family can survive in a changing world.
or
D) Religion doesn't help anyone understand the World around them.

It's unclear which theme would be more descriptive, and that lack of clarity is the problem with this TV Series.  At the same time, the lack of clarity in the theme is what makes this TV Series about the role of Romance in Marriage worth studying for all writers -- most especially Romance sub-genre writers.

The plots of the episodes turn on marriages broken (widowhood, abandonment, divorce), and marriages made or mended.  The only solid, continuing marriage is almost completely off-stage.  The episodes are set in Jerusalem, and the successful religiously solid couple lives in Tel Aviv and has adopted different practices from their ancestors.

The Tel Aviv couple's only interaction with the main story line is to invite the (stubborn, reluctant) grandfather to come teach Judaism to their children who are learning a different tradition.  It's a little like Catholics vs. Protestants, but not really the same thing.

So one stray, modernized, couple mends estrangement from ancestors -- but that whole story line is barely mentioned.

The main plots turn on a young Rabbi with a nice teaching position in a primary school environment where his father has taught, and eventually becomes Principle.  But the young Rabbi wants to be an artist and paint portraits, thus estranging himself from his entire family.

A daughter of the Rabbi's father is married with 4 then 5 children, is abandoned by her husband, but keeps that quiet, lies about it, and supports her family by herself, by taking over the (somewhat illicit) currency-exchanging business of an old widow in the same Care Facility as the grandmother of the young artist-Rabbi.  Her lies are rewarded when her strayed husband comes home, and she takes the advice of another Rabbi to not-know too much about what happened.

Another brother with a marriageable daughter comes back from Europe looking for a husband for his daughter, and thus a Matchmaker (time-honored profession) is brought on stage.

We follow several attempts to match a couple in the ultra-orthodox way that is still rather successful in these modern times.

All the while that meetings are being arranged for possible young couples, we see all the men involved sitting over books, studying Torah and Talmud on the adult level, as we see the elementary school students being introduced to the material.

This is their World, framed by ancient laws of how to behave gently and forgivingly to other people.  These are the Characters - members of a family with a lot in common, and even more in divergent interests and standards of behavior.  And that is the Plot -- get married, already!  All of the Themes suggested above surface many times, but none of the themes actually crystalize.

The reason the Themes in the TV Series Shtisel don't sizzle off the screen with vivid portraits illustrating how to decide what you want out of Life, which mate is right for you, what sort of destiny you want to guide your family toward, is not a flaw in what is there on your TV Screen.

The reason the Themes of Shtisel don't crystalize properly is what is missing from that TV Screen.

That missing material is what we'll focus on here, despite all the other elements worth delving into.

The element missing from your TV screen is one that can be crafted very smoothly in a novel, printed text, but is commercially impossible (so far) in a TV Series.

You'd have to break a stereotype to get the fully realized THEME that belongs to the TV Series Shtisel (and even to Srugim) onto public TV Screens.

You'd have to SHOW DON'T TELL how the Hand of God moves the real world, in everyday reality.  In other words, you'd have to convince your readers that their world actually does have the potential to deliver to them a Happily Ever After ending for their lives, an ending that leaves an indelible legacy stretching back to the Beginning, the family of humanity.

The stereotype that lulls people into security is the portrayal of every person who understands God as a real, close, present force in this World is just deluded into superstition.

The production company behind Srugim and Shtisel, "YES" is their English name, probably couldn't get that kind of disruptive stereotype-breaking show on the air, and I'm not sure if anyone on their staff actually understands the HEA or Soul Mates as a concept.  I don't think they know what a Matchmaker really is -- at least not from the Character portrayed in Shtisel.

But if they could, if Shtisel were a Romance Novel (and it has all the makings of hot-stuff Romance), what could they add that isn't on the screen now?  What could draw that show-don't-tell image of how to recognize what you really want in life -- at first glance.

The principle behind the Matchmaker concept is that such an individual is very close to God, very much an instrument of the Creator of the Universe, and is given prophetic insight beyond the simple facts about a person's ancestry and temperament.

Matchmakng is a divine profession.

But it only works if the young people behind matched are enough in tune with their Creator, enough attuned to their own Souls, to be open on the highest wavelengths, and able to recognize their Soul Mate and fall in love at first sight.

The young, matched, couple only gets two or three brief meetings in a public setting to determine whether to marry.  It has to be love at first sight, and that's not a quality of the person you are looking at, but rather a quality of yourself.

So, given this TV Series is about the arranged marriage, thematically it lacks the dimension of an explanation of how and why matchmaking works, and what could prevent it from working.

Conflict is the essence of story.

Conflict means there is a goal, a reason to reach the goal, and an obstacle to prevent reaching that goal.  The conflict is between the goal-directed person and the obstacle.

Shtisel has that conflict laid out nicely.  The Characters have internal conflicts that are projected into their lives, reflected in the other Characters.

But the plot never addresses the reason why the obstacle is there, or the methods of removing or surmounting the obstacle.

The thematic element completely missing from this TV Series is the content of the material we see everyone studying.

Because we are not given the content of what is being learned, we can't notice how or whether the behaviors and events in the family's daily life illustrate that wisdom contained in that content.  If the content were added, though, the writers would have had to add a Character and change the character (and eventual fate) of the Matchmaker, then play the two off against each other to illustrate the dynamics driving the religious lifestyle.

One thing the American audience might miss because it's not mentioned in the series, is that there are specific pages of specific books assigned to be learned on specific days.

Because it is a set calendar, if the content were specified, it would date the show, and that might prevent it from surviving enough years to earn back its investment.

However, because it is a set bit to be learned, what does happen in real life, too often to be mere coincidence, the content of that assigned page to be learned does manifest in surrounding Reality.

It is just plain spooky how often that happens.  It happens so often that when it doesn't happen, someone who pays attention to correlations knows that they've missed something.  It happened, but you just didn't see it.

So the characterization of the TV Characters is just plain "off" somehow.  Several of them are Rabbis, and the rest learn and pray routinely.  But they don't understand their World in terms of those assigned readings.

What little is revealed of the content is contrived to sound boring and irrelevant (when in fact it is not).  With one exception, each Character who is studying from a book gets interrupted and just ignores what they're reading as if the interruption is more interesting and compelling than the material.  The exception is a very mentally disturbed young man no one in the audience wants to become.  (he gets saved by the woman who falls in love with him)

The stereotype the series did not break is how for normal people, Talmud is boring to learn, and religion is an irrelevant waste of time that just keeps you from having fun in life, or a refuge for the unbalanced.  Religion can't be the key for understanding what's really happening in the real world.

The stereotype the series did break is how helpless and illiterate the women of arranged marriages are.

All of the women Characters in Shtisel read, learn, and think for themselves.  They are dynamic businesswomen, faithful employees with skills and talents, adventurous and indomitable -- just like real people.

These women who have chosen husbands who were suggested to them by a Matchmaker are not helpless victims of an outmoded system.  They are the backbone of the family heritage.  They matter.  They count.  They make their own decisions and carry them out vigorously.  And sometimes they choose a husband who was not selected by the matchmaker!  Sometimes that works out very well.

So, dig up this TV Series, Shtisel -- and the other I've discussed, Srugim.  You will visit an alien world, and learn how to create a Romance with an Alien that will put your Characters on a glide-path to their own, individualized, Happily Ever After ending.

Really - having a blast watching TV is not wasting time.  To be the writer you were born to be, you have to understand why this TV Series, Shtisel, couldn't live up to its potential.  Use that knowledge to build the world your Romance Novel needs.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

The Need for a Wife?

The 1971 launch of MS magazine included a now-classic essay titled "I Want a Wife," by Judy Syfers. It's very short; you can read the whole thing here:

I Want a Wife

The author, of course, isn't asking for a life's companion. What she wants is a multi-purpose appliance called a "wife" to run the household, handle persnickety domestic details, and deal with the demands of the outside world. (Note the tour-de-force of never applying a pronoun—and therefore a gender—to this hypothetical perfect wife.) For example:

"I want a wife to keep track of the children’s doctor and dentist appointments. And to keep track of mine, too. I want a wife to make sure my children eat properly and are kept clean. I want a wife who will wash the children’s clothes and keep them mended. I want a wife who is a good nurturant attendant to my children, who arranges for their schooling, makes sure that they have an adequate social life with their peers, takes them to the park, the zoo, etc. I want a wife who takes care of the children when they are sick, a wife who arranges to be around when the children need special care, because, of course, I cannot miss classes at school. My wife must arrange to lose time at work and not lose the job. It may mean a small cut in my wife’s income from time to time, but I guess I can tolerate that. Needless to say, my wife will arrange and pay for the care of the children while my wife is working. I want a wife who will take care of my physical needs. I want a wife who will keep my house clean. A wife who will pick up after me. I want a wife who will keep my clothes clean, ironed, mended, replaced when need be, and who will see to it that my personal things are kept in their proper place so that I can find what I need the minute I need it. I want a wife who cooks the meals, a wife who is a good cook. I want a wife who will plan the menus, do the necessary grocery shopping, prepare the meals, serve them pleasantly, and then do the cleaning up while I do my studying."

And how about this zinger? "I want a wife to go along when our family takes a vacation so that someone can continue to care for me and my children when I need a rest and change of scene."

When ours was a two-income household with school-age children at home, this essay struck a chord with me. As the author concludes, who wouldn't want a wife like that? Has any actual wife ever enjoyed the services of such a convenient paragon? It's an established truism that in two-career marriages, even those in which the husband shares household chores, the wife typically has the ultimate responsibility to ensure that everything gets done, and she performs most of the "emotional work" of maintaining family and social ties. On TV, Mrs. Brady and Mrs. Muir had faithful housekeepers. Still, the mothers in those sitcoms didn't lie around and relax—or devote themselves solely to intellectual enrichment. While Mrs. Muir was a professional writer, she spent plenty of time on household tasks. Both she and Mrs. Brady not only directed the housekeeper but joined in the hands-on work. What about previous eras, when middle- and upper-class women routinely had servants? Nevertheless, they had to oversee the servants, plan the meals, etc., not to mention hiring the housekeeper, nanny, maids, and other staff. Granted, maybe aristocratic ladies managed to shift all the domestic responsibility to the housekeeper and the butler, with nothing to do themselves but approve menus; their "wife" duties probably focused on maintaining the family's social position. Also, if we traveled back to, say, the nineteenth century and enjoyed the services of such workers, from our modern perspective we couldn't help being aware of how we were exploiting them.

If you're familiar with the stories of P. G. Wodehouse, you'll remember feckless bachelor Bertie Wooster's omnicompetent valet, Jeeves. What we all really need isn't a wife, but a Jeeves. Aside from a few references to his relatives, Jeeves doesn't seem to have a life outside his employment. He not only manages Bertie's apartment, meals, clothes, and other mundane necessities with impeccable perfection but often steps in to untangle Bertie's personal crises.

If we could afford a Jeeves in reality, though, we'd have to acknowledge his right to a life of his own, not to mention being nagged by our consciences for underpaying him. What we actually want is a Jeeves-type robot. Alexa and Siri can answer questions, carry out some tasks, and remind us of appointments, but otherwise we have quite a distance to go in terms of artificial servants. Wouldn't it be ideal to have the multi-skilled domestic robot often portrayed in science fiction, as affordable as a car and as efficient as Wodehouse's ideal "gentleman's gentleman"? Only one potential problem: A machine that could perform all those jobs with the nuanced expertise of a Jeeves would have to approach true AI. And then it might demand its rights as a sentient being, and we'd have to worry about exploiting it.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Depiction Part 35 - Depicting Marriage by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Depiction

Part 35

Depicting Marriage 

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

This Depiction series is about finding ways to show-don't-tell the nuances of intangibles -- like Love or Romance or Heritage or Family -- without blasting the reader with "on the nose" description, exposition or even narrative.

The previous parts of the Depiction Series are indexed here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

In the Depiction study we have discussed Proverbs and Psalms

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/12/depiction-part-13-depicting-wisdom-by.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/10/depiction-part-12-depicting-rational.html

And recently, Prophecy, and other components of culture used in Worldbuilding.

To depict a Human-Alien Romance, you must depict the "human" culture (is there even such a thing as "the" culture of Earth?) and the Alien culture.

If there is no single "Earth Culture" then why would any of your readers think there is a single "alien culture?"

Star Trek fanfic writers often handle Vulcan, Romulan, or Klingon culture as if there is and always has been only one such culture -- monoliths.

As Americans have discovered in recent decades, there is no single, monolithic Moslem culture, religion or belief.  Islam comes in as many shades, gradations, and stark contrasts as does Christianity or Judaism (and most other 'isms).

Complexity is the hallmark of old civilization -- at least on this Earth.

For decades, science fiction has assumed the direction of human cultural development is toward the monolithc -- so that in the future, Earth will have one single culture every human belongs to and is comfortable with.

However, today's trend has reversed.  While, in the early 20th Century, the trend was toward plain vanilla washout of cultures, the melting pot, with the publication and TV Series "Roots" we hit an inflection point toward "multi-culturalism."

That may not last, but today's readers grew up in an environment that values multiculturalism, diversity, and respect for the values and customs of others.

If you use a monolithic society -- a whole world with billions of individuals and only one culture now and throughout all history, you must convince this new reader that such a thing can exist, be viable, and interact with Earth plausibly.

This is a tall order, and may take over your plot, oblitterating all the space you want to devote to a hot Romance.

So depicting your Aliens as having a vast, varied, and confusing past, perhaps irrational and persistent into modern times, could make them seem more human.

Since we are looking at Alien Romance, we should focus on "marriage" or whatever passes for the stable partnership that tends to ensure the survival of the young, the training (acculturation) and education of the young, and perhaps most of all the transmission of Values to the young.

Yes, Romance is actually all about "the young" -- because Romance usually happens to the Young.  Of course, there are "autumn romance" stories, touching beyond words, but the forward looking hope, optimism, and goal directed drive to establish a safe, happy, stable home is for the Young who have not done it yet.

Such youngsters set out to establish themselves mostly because they have been raised in a stable home and understand what makes it a base for "family."

Setting out to write a human/Alien romance immediately raises the question of where do you do the research?  If you want to write a Regency, you know where to find history books.  If you want to write a tale set in Ancient Rome, you know where to find factual material.  But where do you find out about Alien Marriage?

Where do you find out about Alien History, Alien Religion, Alien Customs?

What do Aliens do for "something borrowed, something blue" -- and why?

You will never be more aware of our mixed up, blended and re-separated human cultural heritage and all the customs surrounding marriage as when you set out to create some Aliens.

Science Fiction has always drawn on the strange corners of human history, other parts of this globe, far back to the dawn of time, to generate odd but believable Alien customs.

Most human customs have arisen from biology combined with available technology.

For example, once cloth was woven, it became feasible for people to wear "veils" -- shrouding the head and face.  In certain parts, such as desert where dust blows, face coverings made of cloth became standard wear.

Leather doesn't work so well for face veils because you can't breathe through it.  Cloth woven tightly enough to keep out most sand is perfect.

So growing plants, extracting the fiber, spinning thread, weaving it -- very complex technology with weavers and textile dye experts harboring many trade secrets as dynastic wealth of a family.

You can look up how that developed among humans -- keeping in mind by the time of the Pharoahs of Egypt, textiles were a well developed industry.

Part 21 - Depicting Alien History (Testosterone revisited)
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/11/depiction-part-21-depicting-alien.html

Part 22 - Depicting Alien Nostalgia With Symbolism (Dean Martin song Memories Are Made Of This used in a Video of nostalgic images, perfectly composed and compiled)
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/12/depiction-part-22-depicting-alien.html

So in Worldbuilding your Aliens, research the roots of our current civilization -- from Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome, onwards.  The more you know, the better long-range perspective you can envision from human history.

Then you can derive an Alien marriage custom which will not resemble any human custom, but will seem comprehensible and plausible to your readers because it evolved along a path similar to the path of human custom evolution.

Religion is always a cultural wild card, and an easy way to slip in twists that can become potent Character motivations.  Religion can prompt behaviors that are otherwise implausibly Good -- or insanely Bad.  So any Alien world you build is not complete without a Cosmology and Cosmogany -- and the accompanying epistemologies.

Most people who think with, use, and live by these intellectual abstractions do not know the academic terms for them.  Most people call it their gut.

What do your Aliens use for a gut?

For example, most people today do not know why Brides wear veils -- and modern ceremonies often do away with the tradition of the bridal veil.

See Why Do We Cry At Weddings - Part 2 has a link to Part 1.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/08/theme-symbolism-integration-part-3-why.html

Here is the historical reason for the Bridal Veil from

http://www.torahfax.net

---------quote-----------
Many of the wedding traditions are rooted in the Biblical stories found in the Torah.

Q.  Why according to Jewish tradition, is the bride's face covered with the veil before the Chupah.

A. ...  The Torah tells us that when Rivkah met her future husband, Yitzchak, for the first time, "She took the veil and she covered herself" (Gen. 24:65).

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

This was long before Egypt became a Superpower of that world, and cloth was commonly worn even then.

Also, from the same source:

-----------quote-----
Q.  Why is it customary that the bride's family presents the groom with a Talit?

A. The Talit has four corners, with eight strings on each corner. In total, the Talit has 32 strings (4X8=32). "Heart" in Hebrew is "Lev," which has the numerical value of 32. The Talit expresses the blessing that the couple's life be filled with love for each other.

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

Here is a video on the Tallit:
http://www.chabad.org/multimedia/media_cdo/aid/1749430/jewish/Do-It-Yourself-Tallit.htm

The Veil custom promulgated through thousands of years in a lot of cultures that have no obvious connection to the Biblical figures of Rebecca and Isaac.

The Talit -- the fringed prayer shawl worn today by Jewish men (in some traditions, only married men), is also a custom many simply execute routinely and have no idea where it came from, why they do it (except their parents did) or what any of the (many) symbols incorporated into it mean, why they mean that, or how they came to mean that -- thus what the symbols might be evolved into and what they must not be evolved into.

People know their customs, but not the thousands of years of history behind them.

Customs lose meaning through generations, but they don't lose power and impact.

Failing to execute a "good luck" custom (like something borrowed; something blue) may be cited as the reason a marriage failed.

It might actually be the reason.  People subconsciously nagged by a sense of failure to do the right thing will often subconsciously arrange for their own punishment.

In fiction, that is called Poetic Justice, discussed under depicting random luck.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/07/depiction-part-31-depicting-random-luck.html

So, Romance focuses on the period of initial encounter - the Love At First Sight between Soul Mates -- well, it can be Hate At First Sight in a deep psychological study of the true nature of Love.

Romance is the beginning of the beginning.

But it has its root in the blending of dynasties -- each living human (and presumably most Aliens) has an ancestry that stretches back into the mists of pre-history.  We all come from somewhere, but have been cross-influenced by many strands of culture.

Throughout Time, humans have lived mostly in mono-cultural environments since travel was so difficult.  War, famine, draught could cause mass migration, and later the Americas were colonized due largely to religious incompatibilities, but the migrants would then settle in and absorb or be absorbed into the local culture.  Archeology shows how this pattern repeated through the evolution of human kind, now genetics revealing how Cro-Magnon cross bred with Neanderthal as populations overlapped.

So the trend seemed to be toward blending into a mono-cultural association creating tribe, village, city, kingdom.

A trader, bard, fugitive from justice, wanderer, exile, soldier of fortune, shipwreck survivor might wash up on the shores of a community -- but would be always the "stranger" (maybe for several generations of his children).  But the community would be mono-cultural, harboring the stranger and absorbing him.

Today, we are reversing that trend, accepting strangers among us who view right/wrong/life/purpose in wholly different ways.

Today, in the world of mobility, and mass migrations is producing communities in ferment, but multi-cultural marriages abound, just as between Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon.  Imagine what those partnerships might have been like - rape and abandonment?  Or the male protecting the offspring of the female?

As far as we know, these original humans did not have "marriage" as we know it today - (Credit Cards, Bank Accounts with Joint Tennants, house in the title of a Living Trust, Pre-Nup Agreement).  But their children survived, which says something.

So what is marriage?  How do you depict marriage without pointing to a set of rules laid out in a book so old people can't agree on who wrote it?  How do you depict human/Alien marriage to a reader who is convinced the rules in that old book should be discarded as archaic and inapplicable?

For humans, you can't say marriage biological -- because human males have been known to abandon their own children.  Human mothers have been known to discard newborns, espcially from men they disliked.

Yet even without a legal document, men and women (or two men, or two women) live together, settle in, raise children together, create a domestic arrangement that suits them.  Perhaps it is just inertia, but such arrangements can last longer than some document-supported "marriages."

Does going the documented route spoil a Relationship? (the answer to that is a Theme, you know).

Our modern TV shows are fraught with depictions of dysfunctional families, failed marriages, second marriages, men who skip from woman to woman, and twenty-and-thirty-somethings who dread even calling their parents on holidays.  The trend is to depict the broken family dynamic.

There are many depictions of the heartwrenching sorrow at the death of a parent (aunt or uncle) with whom the survivor did not reconcile.  The assumption is always that there had (just absolutely had) to be something to be reconciled.

The idea of a family with nothing outstanding needing reconciliation is simply absurd.

This could be why the HEA, the Happily Ever After, ending is considered insanely ridiculous - beyond contempt the way science fiction had always been regarded up until Star Trek was revived as a result of fan activity.

Today's TV would never broadcast The Brady Bunch or Leave It To Beaver -- which did depict family life in their respective eras.

Today, there are no depictions on mass-fiction-markets of tight-knit, solid, stable multi-generation families.

So it is up to novelists to lure, lull, entice readers into believing in the solid, tight-knit multigeneration family, and to depict marriage that is not dysfunctional.

Only, neither the reader nor the writer today has a model for a functional family in common with one another.

Depict a functional family, and the reader is held spellbound waiting for the Big Reveal of the Big Secret -- the grand lie -- the deception at the core of the matter.  Everyone secretly harbors hate, --- or so an Alien watching modern TV would assume.

So we must look to human history for a model for a futuristic Marriage - a Couple who might be from different cultures, but comfortably raise sane children who can go out and fall in love and form another (sane) generation that does not hate their parents.

Historically, there are such ideals, and a handful of principles of behavior that you can depict the parents of your Couple modeling.

If the parents of the Couple whirling through the Romance in you novel behave in the following fashion, you will show-don't-tell your readers that your Couple has a fine chance at an HEA, a Happily Ever After that will not end in a divorce.

Here is a quote from chabad.org  

---------quote----------
Marriage is not a power struggle, and the home is not a battlefield. To give in does not mean to relinquish power, and talking things over does not mean you are entering negotiations.

The two of you comprise a single entity—a couple. What is good for one is good for the other. When you come to a decision, it is the decision of both of you as one being. Do it not as a sacrifice but as a gift, not as a defeat but as a triumph of love.

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

So try writing the scene in your novel where the parents of your Couple meet to resolve the issue of "My Kid Is Going To Marry An Alien!"

Here's a series I've recommended:

Lay out the scene using that set of principles.  Depict each set of Parents approaching the problem, modeling that problem-solving methodology.

This is an essential show-don't-tell of why it is likely your Couple will indeed arriive at an HEA (not that it will be easy, mind you).

"The Apple Does Not Fall Far From the Tree" and "Like Father; Like Son" and so on, is all true.  These are descriptions of family.  Culture propagates through solid, tight-knit Family.

Of course, humans have had trouble with our relatives since Caine and Able.  Even Abraham had to send one of his sons away.

Esaw and Jacob didn't get along too well, either.

These stories are preserved because they are a repeating pattern built into our makeup.

It is part of the human condition that families spawn aliens within our midst, and spit them out with considerable force.

Genetics does not guarantee acceptance.

Every large family has a "Black Sheep."  (grand source of drama)

But to have a "Black Sheep" -- a family must be a family.  The solidity of the family is a pre-condition for the drama of the "exception" -- the different one.

Two such "different ones" may end up in a human/Alien Romance, and a grand marriage where both functional families have to come around (far-around) to accepting this new, utterly strange, Couple.

The reader will expect there to be no chance for such a couple, two rejects of their cultures, to reach a Happily Ever After.

You can convince your skeptical readers by depicting the parents, maybe grandparents mixing in, settling their disputes over the Couple by using those principles of marriage.  You might even invoke some good-luck-charm custom, like the Talit, depicting it has having worked.

The HEA demands too much suspension of disbelief for today's reader.  So today's writer has to work harder at convincing the reader.

Get your readers to Cry At The Wedding of your Characters.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Theme-Character Integration - Part 10 - Popping The Question by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Character Integration

Part 10

Popping The Question

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts to this series are indexed at:

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

The topic of marriage is pretty much outside the Romance Genre domain of definition.  However, Robert A. Heinlein often depicted marriages as a stabilizing influence and a powerful adjunct to Adventure.

He also had an ever broadening definition of marriage -- using line-marriage and various forms of open marriage in his later works, novels that became more famous and more widely read than science fiction.

That widening of the audience that Heinlein achieved for science fiction is what we are after in this blog about elevating the prestige of Science Fiction Romance.

Heinlein worked during a time when the social fabric was morphing beneath our feet, women's lib on the rise and divorce rate soaring.  Working women had to wear suits, many pants-suits and skirt-suits were seen as a sell-out).

It is difficult for today's Romance audience to conceptualize why that dress code was important or what the current rash of "sexual harassment" claims is all about.  Of course, if you have been targeted by such harassment, you may think you know what it is about.  Unfortunately, many who are targeted become so emotionally entangled in the gut-deep offense that the bigger picture of what it is about escapes.

That bigger picture is what the Literary Field of Science Fiction Romance can bring to the international conversation on human rights, spotlight it, bring it into focus, create language (Heinlein's "Grok" is still understood), and establish a new domain of discourse.

In worldbuilding for a Science Fiction novel, Poul Anderson taught us (and illustrated with all his magnificent novels) how to start with the biology of an Earth species, and extrapolate how that biology might work in an Intelligent Sentient species - from another world, another ecological line of development.  Or it could work for an Alternate Earth where some asteroid strike or solar low-point diverted evolution into another channel.

In Romance Genre, the focus is on a couple or triad, who have to settle into a Relationship for the purpose of building a life -- of laying the foundation for a Happily Ever After.  But at the moment when they meet and become enamored -- stuck on each other -- they don't care a whit for building anything.  The whole focus is on this brand new feeling that is pre-empting all the fixed parameters of their Self Images.

Romance, when it strikes out of the blue, when it sweeps the couple off their feet (or just sweeps one off of feet, leaving the other in a practical frame of mind), blurs any ability to judge another person, to draw a bead on that other's Personality.

When "In Love" we bind our Identity to the Image of another person, an image that is mostly our own imagination.

Those who have trained and practiced imagining, judging Character, connecting observed actions with the motivations that prompt actions, may have an edge during the onset of a Romance, before surrendering to the sweeping dissolve and reform process of becoming another person because of this binding Bond.

Others, who have not been raised to judge others' Character with objective precision, are more likely to mistake Romance for Love -- two very different personal experiences.

We live in a culture where children are taught there is no objective reality, and that objective judgement of people, values, cultures, is impossible.

During the decades between Heinlein's peak sales, and now, we have seen a massive shift in Thematic emphasis in Romance Genre.

Since there are no objective touchstones by which to judge the people you meet, the only way to evaluate where a new person fits into your life is by how you respond emotionally to that person.  The only thing that matters is subjective emotion because there is no such thing as objective reality, objective values, or any way to judge "Art" objectively.

That idea is a THEME.

Subjective judgement, emotional reaction, is the surest guide to finding a Mate who can build a Happily Ever After with you.  

For decades, our whole society has been using that premise, that subjective judgement is the surest possible guide, to decide whether to marry this or that person, or not to marry at all, or to live-with for "a while" and then decide whether to marry.

Meanwhile, the divorce rate soars ever higher and the first-marriage rate drops (and the birth rate in the USA drops).  Nobody seems to wonder, the way science fiction writers wonder, if perhaps something in our assumptions might be incorrect.

Science is done with the type of thinking that is always questioning assumptions, questioning unspoken and unconscious assumptions as well as assumptions defined into an equation.

When you blend Science with Romance, you get Science Fiction Romance.

Romance Genre never questions assumptions, especially assumptions about emotions, or about the fundamental structure of reality.

Science Fiction Genre always questions every assumption about fundamental structure, unseen under Reality (or even the very existence of Reality.)

Science fiction is done by applying the thought-processes that produce hard science with the artistic process that produces a Life Well Lived.

That artistic process works with the theory that there exists such a thing as the Soul, and Soul Mates.  Science can't prove the existence of the Soul or for that matter, the existence of existence.

So the blend producing science fiction romance is an oil-and-water type mixture, an emulsion, not a solution.

Working that blend,  you come to the question, "Well, where do Souls come from, and how do you figure out whether this person is your soul mate?"

And the answer, "You don't figure it out, you FEEL it."

What is it that you FEEL?

How do you identify it or explain it to someone who has never been struck by love at first sight?

One touchstone is that this special person makes you perform to your own highest standards of moral and ethical precision -- or possibly of productivity, of grit and determination and pure heroism.  This special person brings out the best in you, or perhaps even better than you ever thought you could be.

And after the dust settles, you are happy that you are who you are, happy and proud to be you.

So a Soul Mate coupling is about FEELINGS.

Romance Genre has been selling big time using the "steamy" Romance premise that sexual arousal and emotional imagination about "who" this other person actually is, is the best way to judge whether you've found your Soul Mate and a path to the Happily Ever After.

One reason the general public no longer conceptualizes a "Happily Ever After" life as "real" -- as possible, plausible or even desirable -- is the soaring divorce rate, the shattered-shambles divorce leaves behind especially when there are children.

Everyone knows someone who has an "ex" -- and everyone knows grown people who were children of a divorced couple, very possibly remarried to other people, and very possibly divorced again.

The stable, firm and reliable "nuclear family" has disintegrated.

That's a scientific fact - we have all seen the statistics.

What many Romance readers today don't know is that it was not always that way, and that this phenomenon is not the only possible way for human society to be organized.

Today's readers may have read that nuclear families used to exist, but they have no personal experience of such a thing.  So it's not real to them.  It's a fantasy.

Historically, there is a good reason that England overthrew the law preventing divorce.  A miserable and incompatible couple does not raise self-confident, innovative and productive children.  A bad marriage is bad for society.

Historically, there is a good reason that despite legal divorce, the U.S.A. maintained stable marriages (even somewhat miserable ones) for a very long time.  One big component was the way a female was rendered dependent on the male for her living, and her existence, and her children's future.

Once economic independence became common for women, divorce rates rose.

You'd expect that getting couples properly matched in marriages would have become the norm, and divorce rates would be close to zero by now.  Not so.

We've talked enough about arranged marriages here, and we've all read any number of Romances involving both good and bad arranged marriages.  Some systems have a better success rate than others.  But they produce a preponderance of life-long marriages in societies where divorce is unthinkable if not illegal.  If women don't hold good jobs, they are stuck in misery.

One can argue that being free to leave at any time also allows an emotional freedom that cements a nuclear family together.  If a human feels trapped, that human (male or female) with FIGHT to get out of the trap.

So having free alternatives is a key to a Happily Ever After marriage.

Here is a wonderful article on the relationship between health and marriage, scanning some scientific investigations into statistics, and reporting on following individuals health for many years.  The results are not clear.  Marriage doesn't guarantee better health, and being single doesn't guarantee better health either.  But the research is a treasure trove of story material.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2017/jun/07/is-marriage-good-for-your-health-it-depends-who-youre-married-to

The title says it all:
------------
Is marriage good for your health? It depends who you’re married to
New research has found being married has protective health effects – unless it doesn’t

-----------
What are you doing, why are you doing it, and what is your goal?  What are your chances of achieving that goal by staying in the marriage vs. leaving the marriage?

Humans are happier when doing things voluntarily rather than being forced, coerced, tricked, or manipulated.  Even if the thing being done is actually beneficial to the human individual, if it is in any way coerced, it turns toxic.

So one pervading theme in the modern Romance Novel is, "If I feel like having sex with this person, there's no sense fighting it.  It is impossible to control feelings, and it is unhealthy to try."

One pervading theme in modern science fiction is, "If I see a mistake most people are making, I don't have to make that mistake myself."  That is the theme of the Hero, the maverick, the Adventurer.

So to get science fiction romance from these two themes, you need two Characters with contrasting views.

Marriage and the Happily Ever After have become the subject of legitimate scientific investigation.

So one Character might believe that instant, irresistible sexual arousal is the only reliable sign you have found a Soul Mate who can build a Happily Ever After life with you.

The other Character might believe that the goal of the Happily Ever After Life can be achieved only by a stable, bound, solid marriage and nuclear and extended family structure.

Now, take two Scientific Researchers, each with well-funded projects examining statistics, interviewing people, gathering medical records on them, following individuals through Life.

They each get papers published, and they are BOTH being considered for a Nobel Prize (or whatever the top in their field is), and they become rivals advocating their theories, intent on proving their theory so that society will change and conform to their Ideals.  They want to FIX THE WORLD by demonstrating the path to the HEA for Everyone.

They meet for the first time at a cocktail party (or some Event) having read each others' research, having their minds full of refutations of the flimsy science behind the other person's paper.

Now what happens?  What happens is the PLOT, and that plot must be integrated (fabricated from) with the theme.

The Characters, who they are and where they are in Life, and career, whether they have an "Ex" and children, all the Identity parameters go into fabricating the Plot, the things they do and the consequences of those deeds prompting more actions.

This series is about Theme-Character integration -- and you will note that the moment you have Characters whose Identify is fabricated from the Theme, you suddenly can think of dozens of plot events, and a wide variety of ways that Events might unfold.

Ponder the diverse and inconclusive (even confusing) results of the scientific investigation of marriage -- find these statistical assumptions that may be behind this research and what systemic flaws might be there.  Create two additional experiments, statistical analyses, that your Characters might execute -- and then pit them against each other.

Here is the index to theme-plot-character integration:

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

Maybe instead of being up for the same Prize, they start their Epic Rivalry at the point where they are seeking funding, or seeking a Teaching Assistance-ship under the same Professor.  All that is Character -- and within that Character is the Theme and within the Theme is the Plot.

The Story is all about what their Conflict and their Romance do to change each of them, to forge them into a lifelong and successful partnership.

One signature of success in marriage is revealed in that Article I pointed you to above -- increased HEALTH.  The physical body, relieved of stress, performs better.

Thus at work you get more promotions because you don't "fly off the handle" so easily and produce precision work more reliably.

With children, you are more consistent day to day instead of confusing them with your eruptions of temper, so they grow up to be more steady adults.

There are a lot of documented similarities between human behavior and animal behavior.  Perhaps the most revealing is in the way our pets behave.

Here is an article about dog behavior written by a Veterinarian who has seen individual humans owning successive generations of dogs, and has noted how human habitual behavior toward a dog creates dog behavior problems.

The same habitual human behaviors that prompt dog misbehavior also prompt children's misbehavior.  Each child or dog personality reacts differently to the same human behavior.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/pets/news-features/dog-behaviour-problems-ten-common-causes/

Here are the headings for this article on dogs
---------quote-------
1. Some dogs have a genetic tendency to behave badly
2. Poorly socialised pups turn into badly behaved adult dogs
3. Dogs that are not trained enough cannot learn to be well behaved
4. Old fashioned, dominance-based training doesn’t work
5. Negative experiences leave dogs with long lasting emotional memories
6. Testosterone drives aggression
7. Treating dogs like people doesn’t work
8. Dogs without boundaries are more likely to behave badly
9. Insufficient exercise leads to frustrated dogs that behave badly
10. Trying to solve dog behaviour problems on your own is unlikely to succeed
----------end quote---------

Convert that to children's behavior problems to generate conflict.  You can use a pet's behavior to reveal hidden Character traits.

Back to the article on marriage research:

And in old age, you survive health challenges and adjust together -- you just plain live longer, healthier lives.

Is that what people have in mind when they pop the question?  Do your characters choose a person to be 90 years old with?  Or do they propose marriage because you feel a certain way at that moment?

Stress is the killer.  A good marriage relieves stress.  A not-so-wonderful marriage maintains dangerous stress levels.

What will the next brand new scientific discovery be that proves the Ancient Wisdom modern society has thrown out with such contempt?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Theme-Archetype Integration Part 4 - Marriage and Ownership

Theme-Archetype Integration

Part 4

Marriage and Ownership

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Previous parts in this Theme-Archetype Integration series

Part 1
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/12/theme-archetype-integration-part-1.html

Part 2
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/01/theme-archetype-integration-part-2-how.html

Part 3
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/01/theme-archetype-integration-part-3.html

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

And now Part 4 opening a whole new can of worms, ownership and marriage.

This series on integrating Theme with Archetype was started because of a question posed by a reader of this blog.  Exactly what is an archetype?  What are we really talking about here?

And the answer is complicated because these Tuesday posts are on what goes on inside a writer's mind before the light bulb, "I've got an idea for a story!" flashes on.

This series is about what writers need to know about archetypes in order to use them effectively, and in such a way as to connect with an audience.  And all of this is about the period before the Idea occurs to you.

So "what" an archetype is to you depends in some part on what you intend to do with it and for whom you are doing that.  An archetype is not intellectual property.  The applied and realized archetype - the Characters and their Story - is intellectual property which is owned.

An archetype is a pattern -- like a dress pattern cut out in tissue paper, or a "template" for a web page so that you add your own images and text to a pre-existing design.

In the case of the Archetypes that subsume our shared Reality, the owner of the Archetype is the Creator of the Universe.

We've discussed theme at great length (and will have to discuss it continuously).  The essence of story is conflict that progresses through plot events to a resolution.

What conflicts with what and to what ending -- how those elements relate to each other is where the theme resides.

Theme is a statement about reality, or an inescapable truth, a lesson to be learned because of the plot events that happen to the main character as a result of that main character's character traits.

Theme is the writer's understanding of the nature of life, the universe, and everything as it pertains to the reader's personal problems, joys, triumphs and failures.

What a human being is, and how we related to each other (or to Aliens from some other planet), is all a matter of opinion.  But where did that opinion come from and how do you explain how you arrived at it?

For example, Love Conquers All is our primary theme in the Romance genre.  But how do we know that, despite all the reality based evidence to the contrary?

Plotting a Romance novel is a process of explaining how some Character comes to understand that Love Conquers All, giving the reader a glimpse of that lesson.

Here are some previous posts on Theme.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/05/theme-element-giving-and-receiving.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/03/soul-mate-characters-heroic-villainous.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/10/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-4.html

So Theme is a statement (or question) derived from the Artist's view of the universe, from the Vision of Reality the Artist sees that others may easily miss.

The Artist's job is to depict that vision in concrete form so that those who can't see it do come to understand it.

The problem is that this Artist's Vision of the Universe is non-verbal, but novels are written in words.

How do we translate gut feelings into words?  What property of Reality allows us to flip a non-verbal conceptualization around and make it come out into a string of 100,000 English words?

How can "words" depict an archetype?  What is an archetype - what is it made of and where does it come from?  A thematic premise is that such universal archetypes are created (and owned) by the Creator of the Universe.  (a theme would be: The Creator of the Universe is not God but Humanity.)

Is the concept of "archetype" something a philosopher just made up so academics could earn a living teaching about it?  Is it something that occurred to a philosopher at the dawn of mass production which uses molds and forms to make many copies of a thing?

Or is the concept "archetype" actually an inherent property of reality that humans just make use of? Maybe it is an "undocumented feature" of the hologram we live inside of?

Sometimes a writer just sits down and tells a story, typing away making words flow because they can see and hear the characters.

But sometimes "inspiration" does not happen and the writer then gives up, saying they have "writer's block."

Here is a post on writer's block:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/six-kinds-of-power-in-relationship.html

Or the writer buckles down like a professional and analyzes the Nature of Reality on its highest abstract level, finding where this novel violated an Archetype's inherent form and thus became a formless mess instead of a depiction of a reality.

For example: one of the major Conflicts in any Romance is "your place or mine?"

The argument may then develop into moving in together, then into "sharing" a bathroom, and your half of the closet vs my 3/4 of the closet (well girls have more clothes!)

We use the word "marriage" when describing a mixture of wines.  You can't take such a mixture apart again.  The different chemicals in the different wines may interact producing another chemical that was not in either one at the start.  How do you assign ownership then?

There are two main, underlying, very abstract, issues behind the process of creating a Marriage out of a Romance.  Without Marriage as the end-game, Romance fritters out and dissipates leading to the "epic breakup."  But "marriage" in this sense is not a piece of paper, but a state of being inextricably mixed.

Here are two posts involving Romance as the state of mind that signifies a melting away of ego-barriers, allowing people to blend into a unit.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/genre-root-of-all-passion-by-jacqueline.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/06/astrology-just-for-writers-part-14.html

Neptune, the planet most symbolizing blending or blurring.  It is the transiting planet that always seems to be involved in Romance.  When that transit is over (can last most of 18 months), there comes the Waking Up Next To A Stranger moment where the "honeymoon is over."  The "honeymoon" state of mind is the trailing edge of the Neptune transit where the Other's flaws and faults just don't count, don't irritate, don't matter because they strike softly with blurred edges.

Remember that in this model of the universe, transiting planets don't "cause" anything.  The solar system is just a giant clock with 9 or 10 "hands" pointing to different parts of the cycle of life.  It is just TIME.  What HAPPENS (plot) at any given TIME is the result of how the Artist in us crafts that moment.

The plot events of real life are not entirely and only Free Will Choice -- since everyone has free will, and most of us exercise that will, and everything that others do or don't do affects everyone to some degree, what you do spreads ripples of effects that intersect others' lives.  What they do about your ripples affects you (eventually).

We act. But we also interact.  And we deal with the consequences of other people's actions.

Think about driving a car -- your quick response, avoiding an accident, saving someone else's bacon and they whiz by without ever knowing how close they came to being wiped out.

You can think of the State Motor Vehicle driver manual as an archetype and the embellishments of the drivers as the manifestation of that archetype.  Each trip, each situation is unique.  The archetype behind it all, the Manual, is always the same.

Driving is a good example.  Every trip you make is your artistic creation, just as every novel you write is your artistic creation.

The car you are driving may be registered in your name -- or your spouse's name.  The errand you are doing may be driving car pool, having your neighbor's kids in the back seat.  The gas in the tank (or charge in the battery) may have been paid for jointly by your spouse and your neighbors, and you are contributing time.

Or the car and its fuel may be owned by your live-in S.O. but the errand (going to work) may be yours.  If you earn money at work, but get there driving a borrowed car, is the money you earn yours or your S.O.'s?

Maybe you pay the apartment rent, and the two of you share the car?  Who buys the groceries?

Money is always primary in conflicts in a Relationship (do your Characters date Dutch?).  Next comes belongings, the possessions each brings to the Relationship.

A kept woman, a Mistress, expects the guy to buy her clothes, at least the expensive ones to wear on fancy dates.  But if a guy buys his Mistress clothes and jewels, who actually owns those objects?

Or take a married couple.  The one who earns more, puts more toward the mortgage, two cars, pet grooming, take-out dinners, and covers medical expenses, surely has more "rights" than the one who barely makes enough to cover child care?  They may work the same number of hours, put equal effort into their work, but bring home very different pay checks.

If the paycheck disparity is too irksome, the third type of argument erupts, a conflict over who has the "right" and who has the "privilege" of space occupied.  The territorial arguments may seem to be over closet space, drawer space, or who gets to park inside the garage.

These conflicts are usually the result of some inequity or dissatisfaction with the deployment of joint resources (money, time, etc).  When people live together, over time they acquire or redefine space and physical objects until they have created "marriage" in fact if not in Vows.

So if you're writing a Romance about a Couple trying to move in with each other, or maybe going from living together to getting married (thus involving merging bank accounts, beneficiaries, liens, torts, liabilities and other legal entanglements), and your novel stalls out on you, you might set that novel aside and forget it, or you might examine where these conflicts come from, and why they are so intense, urgent, life-or-death matters for the Characters.

The writer doesn't have to reveal all to the reader.

Readers already know most of what they want to know about Life, The Universe, and Everything.  Novels are to entertain not to explain.

But also, Readers know a lot more about Life, The Universe, and Everything than they know that they know.

It is the writer's job to know these things consciously, and present them in the story entertainingly.

For most readers, thinking is not entertainment-- well Mystery Genre reading requires an amount of reasoning and remembering, a bit of psychology, but rarely delves into the Nature of Creation. Mystery, like Science Fiction, is more concrete, about the tangible realities of life, not the nebulous theories.

The last thing a reader wants to know about is archetypes.  The first thing a writer facing writer's block and a deadline wants to know about is archetypes.

The Reader shares all archetypes with the Writer.

Archetypes are the feature of reality that allows stories made from words about arguments and adventures of fictional characters to connect with a stranger's emotional reality.

Archetypes are the medium of exchange, the carrier wave, between writer and reader.  This is what we both understand, and what we agree on.

The Reader sees that this Character is "one of those" -- but so different from all other Characters and people in reality that the Reader barely recognizes the similarity.

As Jung said, Archetypes are part of the "collective unconsious" -- that dimension that binds us as one (and maybe binds us as One with all the other sentient species scattered around all the galaxies.

Diagram where each point of light is a Galaxy

Jung invented that collective unconscious concept, right?

Maybe he did, but it has existed for thousands of years - probably in more cultures than I've ever heard of.

The easiest place I know of to learn about the connection between the dimension of reality where the concept "collective unconscious" makes sense and our everyday dimension of reality is the Talmud -- the understanding of the Bible written down from the oral teachings of Moses.

Our Reality, physical reality as described by Pythagoras and Aristotle, and investigated by the addition of the rules of the scientific method propounded by Roger Bacon, is easily within the reach of the human mind.

OK, not everyone is smart enough or smart in the necessary way, to understand astrophysics or genetics -- or computer networking and Artificial Intelligence and self-driving cars.  But humanity as a whole produces people who can conquer these subjects.

Writers have perhaps a bit of this or a bit of that ability, plus an artist's ability to "see" what can not be revealed by physics, math, and chemistry.

The artist sees Reality plus another "dimension" -- it is there, we don't know what it is or why it is there or what it does, nor can we "prove" it is there, but it is there and it affects how things go in human life.  Everyone knows this, even those who don't want to know that they know.

In other words, human Will, decisions, even intentions matter.  Heroism matters.  The Lone Ranger's Code matters.

We talked about the Code of Honor here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/01/theme-archetype-integration-part-3.html

A Code is a moral template.  The Lone Ranger would ride into a situation, perhaps summoned by a silver bullet message, and HELP.  When applied to a Situation, his Code prompted him to HELP, even at risk of life and limb.  So he helped.

The Torah, the first 5 books of the Bible, the story of the life of Moses, is a Code which, when applied to all the various situations of life, down through millennia, prompts certain actions (or inactions).  It is a template, an archetype, a Motor Vehicle driving manual, for how humans must behave in order to get the physical world to behave.  It reveals how the Universe was constructed, and shows how to operate within that Universe.

The Talmud is the collection of real world problems and their solutions as derived from the Oral teachings (how Moses explained what the words of the Torah meant).

One of the most curious features that leaps out at the casual student of the Talmud is how decisions of these ancient Rabbis blended the geometry of the physical world with the thoughts, words and intentions of humans to decide when or if a certain deed was appropriate.

Physical things, space, buildings, fields, roads -- the physical world as we find it and as we craft it -- have attributes that depend on ownership.

One of the key elements in decisions of all sorts is ownership.

Who owns an object (or piece of land; a dwelling), what they do with that object habitually, the right to rent the object or dwelling to another, the right to sell that object or dwelling, can make the difference between a permitted action and a non-permitted action.

Close study of these Rabbinic decisions, the argument driven method of arriving at these decisions, reveals a view of the universe that is fundamentally at odds with our modern secular world view.  At the same time, that ancient world view forms a context where Love Conquers All is a natural law, inescapable consequence of fundamental reality.

A human being's emotions, intentions, habits, contracts, ownership of physical objects, all have vast implications in right vs. wrong.

This is a description of physical reality that portrays human intention as making a difference in how Events proceed.  Love matters.

A physical object (or real estate) is connected to its owner -- the equation is rather difficult, but the connection is real and makes a difference between right and wrong.  This also holds for every business transaction.

Around the world, there are many other such code books of behavior based on other descriptions of Reality.  Study as many as you can.  Never pass up an opportunity to learn.

Here's the useful thing about Torah and Talmud for a writer facing writer's block and a deadline.

Reducing what you've written so far to a Question of right or wrong, can break that writer's block.

This is especially true in resolving the common disputes in Marriage (before or after the Ceremony).

A simple Question of what it means to "own" something, of what is the difference between a "thing" and a "person" and what confers authority, can suggest exactly where this novel must start and end.

Very often writer's block happens because the opening line is badly chosen, leading to a middle from a different book than the ending belongs in.

The three pivot points in a novel, Beginning, Middle, End, have to be a matched set.  The Beginning has to bring the elements that will conflict to generate the plot into contact.  The Middle has to describe the best or the worst consequence of that conflict.  And the End must resolve that Conflict.

Oddly, you see that pattern in most Talmudic arguments -- even arguments between Rabbis of widely separated generations. The arguments illustrate methods of conflict resolution that rely on very specific understanding of the Nature of Reality, of the way ownership imbues items with specific properties - some temporary and some permanent.

If you can pose the plot conflict of your stalled novel as a question of whether you may or may not rent or loan a thing, as a question of rights and how you acquire such rights, then you can reveal where the novel you are writing has to END.

If you know where you "are" in your story-arc, and you suddenly know how it must end, how your reader expects it to end (but fears it won't), then you can figure out what has to happen in between.

The trick here is that the reader knows, unconsciously, how the universe works.  And so do you. Therefore you know how this novel must end, and your Reader knows too.  Just to make sure, though, you should state the theme succinctly and directly at about the 3/4 point of the novel.  The theme will validate the Reader's cultural assumptions about how things work -- ending with Happily For Now, or Happily Ever After.

Our current culture is derivative of a blend of many older cultures -- just as Languages borrow words and concepts, create new words, evolve syntax, etc. and become new and different languages, so too cultures evolve.

The Torah and the Talmud as a pair (especially when combined with Kings, Prophets, Chronicles) form a Template for our modern culture.  These books reveal an Archetype from which modern Western cultures have been created.  Just as you create a specific Character from the Hero Archetype (or The Magician, The Mother, etc), so too our modern Culture is created from a cultural archetype.

Our cultural archetype is based on the Idea that reality as we know it was Created by Words - G-d said, and there was!  Theory is that all that is now is still being created by such Divine Utterances.  All is vibration.

Humans also speak.  What we choose to say, and how we say it, matters.

The Love Conquers All and Love At First Sight/Soulmates themes explicate the older culture described in the Talmud. Get a grip on how that older culture worked, and every novel you write using a Love Conquers All or Soulmates based theme will be easy to write, and will have internal consistency.

And there are a large number of other, older, sources that reveal these older cultural archetypes which, in today's world, are stewed together unrecognizably.

The more widely read you are, the better chance you have of smashing through any writer's block situation that confronts you.

To resolve the age-old marriage disputes of who owns what, reach back to those first principles about the nature of reality on the highest abstract level -- then work your way down to the particular situation your Characters face.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Reviews 17 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg Alien Separation by Gini Koch

Reviews 17
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Alien Separation
by
Gini Koch

Today we're going to look at a genuine Science Fiction Romance with what seems to be Fantasy elements -- that turn out to be alien-advanced-science.  This series is popularizing mixed genre. 

Alien Series Book 11 from DAW Science Fiction, ALIEN SEPARATION by Gini Koch. (534 pages of small print)




Last week and the week before, we looked at Why We Do We Cry At Weddings. 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/08/theme-symbolism-integration-part-2-why.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/08/theme-symbolism-integration-part-3-why.html

While I was writing those two posts on why we cry at weddings, I was itching to cite Gini Koch's series because it is a case in point. 

In 2011, the 3rd in Gini Koch's Alien Series was all about The Wedding after two of the hottest Alien Romance novels you will ever read, and was aptly titled Alien In The Family.  I loved the Wedding Dress on the cover.



Here is Gini in 2011, Gini in the foreground and me in the background, at the con where we first met in person.  Photo curtesy of Marsheila Rockwell. 

Gini Koch and Jacquelne Lichtenberg

Only up to Book 3 in this series, and I already admired what Gini was doing with a story that was complex and thus difficult to tell.

Yet, she turned this galaxy-spanning tapestry into a follow-your-nose page-turner plot using elegantly simple techniques but orchestrating them into a symphony. 

These novels illustrate how a text-only writer can use the techniques developed by camera-directors for big screen cinema to create close-up reader engagement.

The tight use of Point Of View enhances the emotional impact because all the things that happen, and all the consequences of actions taken by Kitty-Kat (the main POV character - a human woman with morphing genetics) are felt sharply by the reader.

As I've noted previously, the novel writer's medium is not "words" but "emotion."  These 11 novels are crafted of the emotional spectrum that a modern, well educated, intelligent woman would experience when hit by the inexplicable, the bewildering, and the confounding.

Kitty-Kat's theme song is, "But What Is Really Going On?" 

Think about that theme -- This Is What I See, But What Is Really Going On? 

That is the seminal question of our everyday lives right now. 

Last week, we looked at several scientific reports detailing the 7 Primal Emotions or Primary Emotions as in Primary Colors.  And we looked at one list that reduced that 7 emotions to 4.  None of these lists pinpointed LOVE.  Then we contrasted those scientific lists with a different list that started with LOVE and used love as the driving force behind all the other 6 primary emotions. 


In other words, we did a Kitty-Kat exercise of "What is really going on here?"

We look at the world as it is painted in the News, at the "excuses" employers use for hiring/firing/promoting/transferring workers, at the kinds of cars everyone in your current traffic jam are driving, at what your neighbor's house just sold for, at what your doctor just billed your insurance for, at the endless lists of declared Presidential Candidates, and we think, "Wait a minute!  What's really going on here?"

So we all relate to Kitty-Kat's double-takes and we wish we could penetrate the blurry flog surrounding us the way she solves galactic riddles.

The close following of Kitty's Point of View gives us the perspective on our own problems, and makes each of these novels a treasure of a Good Read. 

The real delight in the series as a whole, a long series of long novels, is how the Romance starts with Love At First Sight, continues through harrowing adventures and desperate combat to the Wedding, and then after the Wedding the Romance continues to get more intense, the "tall, dark stranger in Armani suits," more mysterious and more dear.

As noted in Why We Cry At Weddings, the typical Romance ends before the Wedding Planner is hired.  Gini Koch has crafted a MARRIAGE which is a continuous, ongoing, cliff-hanger Romance (complete with amazing sex scenes).

Kitty-Kat, a human woman from a human family, marries an Alien -- native to Earth, yes, but of off-world ancestry.  The off-world in-laws take a real-time interest in the Wedding, and their political situation on their planet continues to change Kitty-Kat's life, right on through the birth of her first child, and the boomerang genetic effect gestation of that child has on her body. 

Here in Book 11, ALIEN SEPARATION, for the second time, Kitty-Kat and her alien husband are targets of assassins.  That's another theme that runs through Kitty's new life -- she has a very happy marriage still shrouded in Romance, but there's always someone (several someones, usually, and never who you'd expect) trying to kill her, her husband, her daughter, or others who matter to her.

Sometimes, what seems to be an attack actually turns out to be help-in-disguise, or perhaps a cry-for-help.  It gets complicated because there are pure-energy-beings, beings who are native to the inside of worm-holes, hybrid-beings of various types, clones, and mechanical beings.  And you can't quite tell which are "just" animals. 

ALIEN SEPARATION starts out with Kitty, her husband, her daughter, and an ensemble cast of her friends and allies being swept up and transported in a "beam" to an Alice-In-Wonderland-Fantasy world complete with talking animals (or are they animals?).  They land separated from each other, scrambling to survive as they hunt for each other. 

Again, as in the first novel, TOUCHED BY AN ALIEN, the environment and events give the reader the definite impression that this is a Fantasy Series -- when all of a sudden, what is "really going on" begins to re-arrange your assessment of the difference between science and magic. 

If you want to write Alien Romance that reads like Science Fiction to science fiction fans, like Fantasy to fantasy fans, like a Videogame to videogamers, and at the same time, like Romance to romance fans, then make this series your textbook.

Here are some previous posts I've done mentioning or featuring the Alien Series by Gini Koch.

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

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

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-10-use-of.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/reviews-2-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/05/reviews-7-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/06/information-feed-tricks-and-tips-for.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/08/reviews-9-sex-politics-and-heroism.html

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/03/reviews-12-heroic-point-of-view-in-mass.html

In most of those mentions of Gini Koch, I have noted that absolutely everything about her Alien Series makes it a Must Read, whether you are studying how to blend genres or just looking for a good read.

But every time, I have noted that some readers may find the text wordy in spots, which makes the pacing un-even in an annoying way.  Most readers have a "fast-skim" mode and just skip over of fly through sections where there are too many words used to tell a brief part of the story.

When you write a novel, you have to just let the words flow -- and there will always be too many words here and there.  Second draft sees about 10% cut, and third draft -- or the editor's blue pencil over the manuscript -- soaks another 10% out.  If those cuts are well done, the result is easier to read, and more fun to read, and re-read.

When you have a long story to write and a tight deadline, very often there's no time to do those careful cuts.  To know what to cut, you have to let the manuscript sit for a few months, then re-read it and cut as you go.  If you do not have the time to let it sit, then wordy-structures will get into print.

There is one other way to prevent wordy-structures from making it into print -- don't write them to begin with.  Make a habit of crafting your sentences tightly -- of constructing dialogue without loops and repetitions, without one character recounting to another what the reader already knows (except where a character is lying to another character and you want the reader to know that.)

I don't know how she did it, but Gini Koch achieved a huge reduction in wordy-constructions and looping dialogue with this novel.  The published version would not benefit from another 20% cut. 

Every page is filled with purposeful, plot-advancing, story-enhancing words and nothing else.

It's not terse writing, yet, but it is very different from the previous 10 novels. 

For that reason alone, I recommend that you read these 11 novels in order.  This series is not like Sime~Gen, where you can read in any order.  This is an ongoing saga, a story that unfolds in chronological order, and all about the same characters you get to know in depth.

December 2015 has book 12 scheduled for publication -- ALIEN IN CHIEF. 

Go to Gini Koch's Amazon Page and on the upper left, click the button to FOLLOW her.  Amazon will email you when the next book comes out. 

I love that FOLLOW button!  I follow a lot of series this way.

All in all, Gini Koch's Alien Series is a classic in the making.  It breaks new ground, gives a new perspective, and heralds the shifts in modern publishing and audience taste. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com