Dialogue Part 10 - The Silent Dialogue from Rude To Ridiculous

Dialogue
Part 10
The Silent Dialogue from Rude To Ridiculous 

Previous parts in the Dialogue series are indexed here:

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

We have discussed Edward T. Hall's book on cultural anthropology titled The Silent Language which examines cultures and body language, personal "space" and many other topics, most notably how "culture" resides in the subconscious mind.

https://www.amazon.com/Silent-Language-Anchor-Books/dp/0385055498/







And more recently The Silent Language of Leaders: How Body Language Can Help--or Hurt--How You Lead Kindle Edition by Carol Kinsey Goman

This book shows how being viewed as a Leader today depends entirely on body language, and believe it or not, how you hold your hand and fingers when you gesture!

https://www.amazon.com/Silent-Language-Leaders-Help---Hurt--How-ebook/dp/B004SQS6SK/

This SILENT LANGUAGE OF LEADERS is based on neuroscience, which you'd think would be independent of Culture.  But I'd challenge that idea since it has been shown how plastic the human brain is, and how configurable the human genome is.  Traumatic and other meaningful experiences in early life can re-arrange your genes and brain synapses so you develop propensities and abilities different from your peers who did not have such experiences.

Yet, humans tend to gravitate toward and organize around a certain type of other human -- and today we call them "Leaders."  A science fiction writer can challenge that notion, too.  Some Aliens somewhere out there might call those central poles of organization Servants.  Think about that.  We look up to Leaders.  Aliens might look down on them as the British Aristocracy looked down on Tradesmen.

How you regard others, how you sort and group others by the traits you see in them is configured by your Culture.  The very definitions of "Good" and "Bad" have huge Cultural components.  And Culture is silent.  Very silent. Non-verbal.

Most people don't know they have a "culture" or think the word "Culture" means polite or upper crust or high class, or maybe taste.

"Culture" is mostly non-verbal.

Most people can't verbalize the shattering revulsion experienced when they unexpectedly meet up with someone who is extremely rude.  They merely judge that person as an intrinsically bad person, not to be associated with.

Other people will view rudeness as if the miscreant were well aware of the proper way to act, but has decided to play the buffoon, the clown, or the disruptor.

One thing most humans do, though, is judge others by their behavior, their language, body language, choice of words (such as invective or 4-syllable-jaw-breakers), and perhaps most of all tone of voice.

All of these parameters are strictly dictated by culture.

Each combination of variables conveys a non-verbal message which is nevertheless dialogue, speech, communication.

Two (or more) people communicate on many levels besides words.

Text narrative fiction writers are hampered by this, while stage and screen actors can creatively and originally invent many unique characters all speaking the same text words.

Text narrative writers can "describe" their Character's actions, but can capture the "style" and thus meaning of the body language only by offering an interpretation of the movement, telling rather than showing what the Character is silently saying.

Readers will read the interpretation and visualize different movements that mean what the writer has told them the Character means.  The reader will make up the appearance and movements of the Character according to the reader's culture, or according to the reader's notion of different cultures.

For example, the most eloquent move a Character can make is the SHRUG.

There is the Italian shrug, the Arabic shrug, the Mexican shrug, the teenage defiant shrug, the Southern shrug -- the one shoulder shrug, the both shoulders to the ears shrug, etc. etc.  All that doesn't even mention what you do with your hands while you silently deny all knowledge of the subject with a shrug or declare in no uncertain terms that the entire topic is irrelevant with a passive-aggressive assumption of superiority.

By and large, in USA cultures (there are a lot of them!) the shrug is considered rude, especially when it conveys that the topic is irrelevant or unimportant.  Teens are excoriated searingly for shrugging to wriggle out of parental interrogations.

Have you ever seen a presenter in a business meeting shrug when the boss asks a question?  Maybe after the meeting, when a peer asks, but not during a meeting when the boss asks.

Have you ever seen a Presidential Candidate at a podium before a large audience shrug?

OK, *shrug* -- we have had a lot of actors, performers of considerable skill, running for President, so maybe you've caught one or two shrugging for effect, but not when attempting to project an "image of strength."

In some USA cultures, various shrug-motions are acceptable statements, while others are rude.  In other USA cultures, all shrugs are rude.

Another form of culturally nuanced "speech" that can not be captured well in cold text (but that actors can convey in full video) is impatience.

Most of the situations where a writer wants to show a Character being impatient will read as the Character being "weak" or "temperamental" and thus not fit to lead or command, or have their opinion on anything respected.

"Impatience" is considered a Character flaw revealing the flaw of "Bad Judgement."

Judgement is the ability to process vast amounts of apparently trivial data to understand the nature of the problem and find the most efficient way to vanquish that problem, never breaking stride toward the objective.

Deciding "what to do" is just as vital to success as "when to do it."  As in comedy, timing is everything.

So those who are seen to be acting correctly, but acting too soon, are seen as "impatient" which makes them just as untrustworthy as those who act too late, or take ineffective action, "too little; too late."

How a given Character is assessed by the Reader depends as much or more on the Reader's culture as it does on how the Character is written or played.

Extend that to how a human reader of today would assess the Character of an Alien, and whether the Alien is seen as "impatient" and thus weak or ineffectual, or as "decisive" and strong.

Does America admire swift action over minimalist action?

Does America admire swift action over effective action?

"America" -- the middle-of-the-road average is the biggest audience a writer can strive to reach.  This is true in other countries, too -- the average, middle-road citizen is comprehensible to both extremes.  Where exactly that middle is varies from generation to generation and among countries and cultures.

At this time, there is no "American" or USA culture, singular and distinct with rules of Silent Dialogue uniformly distributed.  Even by geography we are not a uniform country. Some areas still retain Character, but in any area of the USA you will find individuals from elsewhere diluting the average.

We are a mixed-muddle, so no generalization will hold.

If your Alien crash lands in a backyard in Texas, he might knock on the door (if his culture would include the idea that requesting entry is polite -- it might NOT consider a knock as polite).  The Texas resident opening that door might be from New York.

You know the expression, "In a New York Minute."  People move faster in New York City -- not so much upstate.

So are New Yorkers "impatient?"  Slow-speaking Southerners think so, and many consider it a character flaw to be racing around so fast all the time.

But New Yorkers see their lives as a race.  Early bird gets the worm.  Whoever is first in line, gets, and others do not.  You want the job? Get to the interview early.  Even doctor's offices have been known to post signs that if you are 15 minutes late, you will be charged for the visit but will not see the doctor.  

The USA was built on many ideas, but one most often quoted (because it's so alien to the denizens of other countries) is TIME IS MONEY.

In other words, time is a commodity.

See the post on Capitalism and how Money can be a commodity just like copyrights can be a commodity.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/10/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_11.html
Time is another property of reality that can be regarded as a commodity and commoditized.

Perhaps Capitalism should not be called Capitalism -- as noted, that is a misnomer -- but rather Commoditism, a process of turning the characteristic properties of reality into trade-goods.

We are seeing physics breach the frontiers of the space-time-continuum, discovering the Higgs Boson and chasing "gravity waves."  Black Holes and Dark Matter  all trying to get a handle on the nature of Time.

Is Time Travel possible?  Is Interstellar travel (or intergalactic) possible?

These are the substance of modern science fiction while fantasy genres explore alternate universes and dimensions where "magic" works and mythical creatures are real.

In our Silent Dialogue we use Time to tell others who we are.  How fast you respond to a comment or question, how slowly you move to comply with a request or order, speaks volumes about who you are, who you think you are, and who you think you are relative to everyone else.

For example, if you keep people waiting for you -- say, the family is piling into the car to go see a movie, or guests are gathered in the living room waiting to sit down to dinner -- and you just do not show up "on time" (how early or late you can be and still be 'on time' is a mathematical formula!), you are informing all those people that you and your interests and affairs are more important than their time.

In some cultures, an explanation is due upon arrival, and it better show that your priorities are the same as the priorities of those you kept waiting.  In other cultures, any explanation is viewed as an "excuse."

The maxim is never make excuses and never apologize if you want to be respected.

In yet other cultures, following that maxim, or indeed any maxim, is viewed as indication of a weak character.

What might "time" be worth to Aliens on some other planet?

How would Aliens prioritize life-minutes?  Who keeps who waiting?

Is there some property of objective Reality that dictates cultural attitudes toward Time, or toward another individual's life-minute?

Today, the USA thinks of those who wait as less important than those who keep others waiting.

For example, a crowd gathers to hear a Presidential Candidate speak, and the Candidate is scheduled to speak at 7:30.  The TV cameras light up, the Security folks are their toes, and ten minutes after the appointed moment, a tech comes out and adjusts the microphone -- but no candidate, nothing.

Well, it must be he/she is doing something Important because being The Candidate is Important -- but the audience is not that Important.

Is this cultural value the only possible value?  Is this inherent in just being human?

Not necessarily.  Aliens might look at the entire procedure very differently, as indeed humans have, in other cultures Historically.

For example, you would think the High Priest working in the Temple in Jerusalem would have been regarded as an Important person doing Important things.

The people who gathered to watch, or to hear the High Priest read from the Torah on Yom Kippur, might be viewed by today's Americans as "less important" than the High Priest.  Yet, in that Historic time, there was a hard and fast rule saying the High Priest, no matter what, must not keep the public waiting.  Their "time" was important, too, and it was his duty to discharge his duties in the expected time-interval.

Today that translates into a set of Rules regarding the conduct of prayer services.  There are sections of Prayer which are flagged "Must Not Interrupt" -- if you are in the middle of such a section, and something happens demanding attention, you must first finish the section.  These section demarcations are carefully observed.

HOWEVER, if it should happen that the congregation has gathered and is ready for a section that is to be led by a Reader with specific skills (such as reading aloud from the Torah), or for example, the blowing of the Shofar (the ram's horn), and the ONLY member of the congregation with that skill is in the middle of such a section that must not be interrupted -- then the individual must interrupt that prayer-section and go immediately to serve the congregation with his skill.

The congregation must never be kept waiting, not a New York Minute!

The High Priest or an individual gifted with talent and skill serves the public without delay.  That "without delay" rule indicates something basic about the structure of Reality, while the "keep them waiting" rule used by public speakers today violates the strictures of Reality.  (small wonder things aren't working too smoothly)

We can only infer what that Structure of Reality might be.

We use our cultural prejudices to make that inference.

For example, we might infer that because "The High Priest" is not "more important" than "The Public" (because he can't keep the public waiting) therefore "The Public" is more important than the "High Priest."

But that would be a reasonable inference only if "important" and "more important" is part of the reality matrix.  Perhaps no ONE human is "more important" than another, so that since the High Priest is only one person, and the crowd of The Public is lots of people, the crowd is "more important?"  Or maybe "important" can not be attributed to a mortal being? Perhaps deeds can be "important" if performed at a certain time, but people don't have the attribute "important?"

Leaders, bosses, decision-makers whose decisions must be implemented, holders and wielders of "Power" are nothing but servants of The Public.  There deeds of service are important.  They, themselves, are not.

Aliens might look at it that way.

As writers, trying to create plausible Aliens, we have to be aware of all the ways different human cultures have viewed that objective Structure of Reality, the dimension of Time.

For example, the Navajo saw Time in a very different way than the settlers of the Old West, which led to a lot of scorn and uncooperativeness on both sides.  "Lazy Indians?"  Far, far from it!  But they wouldn't show up for work "on time" or get the job done by "quitting time."  Unemployable, lazy good-for-nothings -- right?

So given the panoply of views among just one species, humans, imagine how Aliens would see Time -- and consequently how they would "speak" in their "Silent Dialogue."

Music and dance are forms of communication stretched along linear Time.

Music, we define as Sound. But maybe it can be Silent?

Dance, is movement usually to a rhythm, but even a drumbeat can be silent, just a Conductor waving his/her hands.

As Media Announcers learn to speak in a "tune" and cadence that just reeks "newscaster" or whatever role they are playing, so too do humans speak in tune and accompany the articulated sound with eye-blinks, hip-shifts, shoulder-shrugs, lip-twitches, and a thousand tiny movements that others respond to.

"Friends" move together when speaking -- eye-blinks synchronize -- and thus friends acquire the feeling that the other person understands them as no one else does.

It is a well documented feature of human communication, something we do entirely unconsciously.  It is possible that the aversion some people feel to communicating even via video chat is due to a failure to synchronize body language.  It's not "real" if you can't sit with a person, face to face, and assess them by how well and quickly they synchronize with you.

But what if Aliens felt threatened by the human unconscious tendency to "mirror" twitches and fidgets?  What if, to the Aliens, this involuntary movement was not fraught with deepest meaning, as it is with humans?

Perhaps the British "upper crust" trained not to fidget in earliest youth, to keep that "stiff upper lip" were favored over Americans?  For that matter, the inscrutable Japanese and Chinese cultural facial non-expression might be preferred - but even they blink their eyes.

How do you assess (judge) a person who fails to "synchronize" with you?  Can you have a meaningful conversation with someone who zigs when you expect them to zag?

How many of your limited life-minutes would you spend/waste on who keeps you waiting, who won't synchronize eye-blinks, who can't dance with you?

What would your Main Character make of such an Alien?  How could the communications breakthrough to save Humanity be made with no words to speak?

And of course, there's assessing whether the Alien is lying to you, saying the correct words but telegraphing an opposite meaning -- not just failing to communicate but mis-communicating.  What do you report to your boss when asked what's "really" going on?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Dialogue Part 7 - The Gigolo and Lounge Lizard by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Dialogue Part 7
The Gigolo and Lounge Lizard
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Previous entries in this Dialogue series are found here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/10/dialogue-parts-1-4-listed.html (which has been updated with more posts).

This entry is not about the SHOWTIME TV Series The Gigolo, but in a way it is in that general direction.

A Gigolo is a paid Escort for a rich woman (which may include sex) who attends formal Events.  A Lounge Lizard is an out of work Gigolo who is looking for a woman to hire him. 

In either situation, the writer is faced with the task of writing the Gigolo's dialogue -- the pick-up line, and the long, smooth stream of lies he utters as part of his job.

A Gigolo is a professional liar.

So see the entry on Liar Dialogue:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/11/dialogue-part-5-how-to-write-liar.html

...and for a discussion of The Misnomer
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/02/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-6.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/story-springboards-part-3-art-of.html

This post is a dialogue writing lesson, exercising the writer's ability to come up with "snappy dialogue" and "retorts" and "one-liners" but above all, the specific line a character says to another character that makes the reader understand how the character who believes a lie could be taken in by such a transparent gigolo.

The bald truth is that the writer generally does not nail the gigolo or lounge lizard dialogue on the first try. 

Great dialogue is usually produced on rewrite, maybe the 5th rewrite.  But somewhere in that first-draft blurt-the-story-out attempt at dialogue will be a line, a word, a dynamic moment of CONFLICT that has to be preserved.

Usually the problem embedded in first draft is pacing.

Very often an editor will return a manuscript with a marginal notation that says this dialogue is not PLAUSIBLE -- or I DON'T BELIEVE THIS -- or MAKE ME BELIEVE IT -- or IT'S UNCLEAR WHY THIS CHARACTER BELIEVED THIS.

Editors see a manuscript from one perspective, writers from another, and readers from yet another.

When all 3 see a solid product, it's a 3-dimensional image and none of the 3 views show the whole thing.

And yes, the touchstone that makes great dialogue work is THEME.  I know you're weary of hearing me say that, but it's nevertheless true.  Most of us have to conform our dialogue to the theme in rewrite.

Conforming dialogue to theme not a random process, not a matter of "taste" and not just characterization or description, nor of the writer's "voice" nor of just how you feel at the moment.  There is a systematic structure behind dialogue, and it can be learned.  Some writers have a talent, an "ear" for dialogue.  Others have to learn it. 

Good dialogue is a necessary but not sufficient condition for making a sale.

Dialogue is such a complex skill that showing you have that skill on page 1 or 2 can hook an editor. 

If you demonstrate you have all the skills that are woven together in good dialogue, an editor is more likely to assume you are able to take editorial direction. 

So if your Romance Novel starts with a Lounge Lizard approaching your heroine with a pick-up line, maybe rescuing her from a sticky social situation to demonstrate what an exemplary Escort he is, you have an immediate, conflict-fraught, instance of off the nose dialogue, oblique references subject to misunderstandings in layers.

If the guy is just looking for a paying gig with this richly dressed woman, and ends up falling in love with her -- (after he seduces her into hiring him, or when she flat refuses to hire an Escort) -- you have conflict on all levels.

If you set your story on, say, a Cruise Boat, (where they can't escape each other), you can ratchet up the tension and suspense because there is a fixed time when the cruise will be over.

From there, you have many choices for complications to your plot -- cruise boat mechanical failures, bad navigation leaving them in a terrible storm, hijackers forcing them to port in a terrorist held country, -- you choose the list of complications that arise via the theme you have chosen. 

You can do that plot on a Space Ship -- a cruise ship or say, a military vessel on a mission, or a cargo vessel, or a hospital ship (Research that by reading James White novels), or a Colony (lost or otherwise).  Each setting shapes the plot, and explicates a different theme which then shapes the Relationship between Gigolo and Rich Woman.

But the dialogue technique is the same, regardless of location, regardless of the subject of the discussion, regardless of the character of the characters.

The substance, the content, of the dialogue differs with theme, but the method of creating dialogue out of the speech you hear in your head is pretty much the same.

There are differences depending on what the characters are doing.  If they're breathless in the middle of a sword fight, separated in a loud gun-battle, or suffocating as a space ship loses air, they will speak in shorter bursts, but the trick of creating that dialogue is the same, regardless.

Master this single technique and it will serve you in almost any genre or format.

It's often taught as, "Don't Speechify." 

Don't make your characters speak in long paragraphs flowing from subject to subject, even if the logic behind that line of thought is vital for the reader to grasp.

Don't write SPEECHES -- like a Presidential State Of The Union Address! 

Dialogue is not a newspaper article explaining a whole incident all at once.

Dialogue is not speech, and it's not speeches. 

Dialogue is not an essay.  Dialogue isn't even a letter you'd send to a friend. 

Dialogue is more like texting than it is like school essay writing.

If you read some science fiction written in the 1930's and 1940's when all those writing science fiction were beginning writers, well educated and well versed in explaining science -- but not in portraying relationships -- you will find dialogue that today is called STILTED.

Stilted dialogue makes the characters sound self-conscious - as if they know the reader is listening.

In stagecraft, the technique you must master is called "the fourth wall" -- the wall between the audience and the stage, so the characters are unconscious of the audience.  Yes, Greek Plays use the narrator, the chorus, etc. addressing the audience directly.

This evolution of storytelling from the shaman around the campfire to Showtime streaming video episodes of Gigolo. 

Another indication of that 4th wall effect, of the characters being unaware of the audience watching is the choice of "Person" in which to tell the story.  The 3rd person (he, she, etc) and past tense (he said, she howled) creates that 4th wall and makes it both transparent and firm.  That allows the audience to "identify with" the characters, but there are many skills necessary to make that effect work.

Beginners almost always grab for the much easier First Person (I couldn't believe it when my Date for the Prom turned into a wolf right before my eyes.)

It is so much easier to write First Person -- to BE the character, and reach out and talk directly to the audience (like the Greek Chorus and narrator), to make the drama of immediate and engaging concern to strangers that you now see a flood of novels using this format. 

That's a trend, a style, and it will turn again, so if you intend to launch a career that spans many trends, become facile with all persons and tenses for storytelling.  Master point of view and it will hone your dialogue skills.

Why does point of view (and "person") matter to dialogue?

Because the Identity of the speaker is fleshed out by not only choice of vocabulary, but also by how and whether that character waits for the other character to finish speaking, by what "go-stop" cues the character will accept or respond to.

How patient is this character?

You can TELL NOT SHOW easily by saying to the reader in the narrator's voice, Tom was an impatient man, a type-a personality on the hoof.  Or you can SHOW NOT TELL that same information by how Tom interrupts people who are speechifying at him.

Relationships can be defined in SHOW rather than TELL by the rhythm of the dialogue, by what's left out, by finishing each others' sentences (or not even bothering) -- about how well or poorly the two people communicate with each other, and how the weave a third person into the conversation.

One of the stark changes in society over the last century (no, I'm not that old; I read a lot) is the art of conversation.  Today people communicate but they don't converse much or often.

If you're building a Romance Novel, you want the two principles who will end up with each other to converse even better than they communicate.

The difference between conversing and communicating is the main skill of the Lounge Lizard. 

The Lounge Lizard, the Gigolo looking for work, is a master of conversing freely, arousing emotions in the targeted woman that re so bright, clear, and pleasant that the flare of emotion obliterates the lack of communication.

Conversation is "off the nose" dialogue - the words are not about what the conversation is about.  You don't say what you mean and mean what you say.  In Conversation, you induce in the other person the illusion that they understand who you are.

This is the main skill of the Confidence Man, the grifter, the scam artist.  But it is also what happens when you meet a true love. 

Conversation happens between people "on the same wavelength."  These two Lovers have some element of world-view in common.  That's the one topic they never have to talk about (on the nose) because they resonate to that one underlying truth about the nature of Life.

They can (and usually do) disagree and fight over everything else. 

Their conversation is all about that everything else.

The Lounge Lizard is master of mimicking that resonating effect by dancing around the one issue or subject he perceives is most important to that woman. 

Both men and women treasure that sensation of resonating to another person's world-view.  When a couple finds they resonate on several topics, that their combined world view is a symphony in perfect attunement, there is no way to destroy that relationship.

If that resonance is real, it will hold them together forever.

The Lounge Lizard wants to avoid "real resonance."  But at the same time, he offers the illusion of that resonance to his paying client. 

That's the Gigolo's inner conflict, upon which you can build his external conflict. 

This is the same conflict dynamic as the Spy who lives under cover in the foreign country and pretends to hold their beliefs -- only to find that over time, he becomes loyal to those alien beliefs, betrays his country and is a Traitor. 

There's a principle in classical magic - you become what you pretend to be.  Thus when you don magickal robes to officiate in a ceremony where you must act like your Higher Self, eventually you become that Higher Self in everyday life. 

This principle is so pervasive that those who have not studied magic know it, believe it, and/or accept it when they see it.

You are what you eat; you become what you pretend to be. 

So the writing technique is the same whether you're writing Romance or Mystery (or Science Fiction or SFR etc.)

Here's an example of dialogue from an action-mystery novel well worth studying for dialogue.  We have a set of characters who have become friends, even close friends, and lovers during the course of solving other mysteries.  Dana is the star, and should therefore have the most dialogue. (that's a rule to learn -- face time and lines of dialogue are maximum for THE MAIN CHARACTER - the one whose story you are telling.)

Proportions and pacing are essential components of Show Don't Tell.

Here "She" is Dana, the star of the novel.

---quote from Gray Wolf Mountain, a Logan & Cafferty mystery/suspense by Jean Henry Mead ----
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008UEH6ZA/

She thought again about Rhonda Bailey's connection and he reason both bodies were dumped in the same stream. The killer must live nearby.

“How far are we from the cabin where Gus was found?” she asked Tom.

He turned to survey the area to get his bearings. “About a mile as the crow flies, I’d say.”

“I wonder if the sheriff’s deputies have searched the cabin for clues to the killer’s identity.”

“I’m sure they have.”

Dana thought for a moment. “Why didn’t the killer bury the bodies instead of bringing them here? He obviously wanted them found. A warning to others to stay away?”

“Looks that way,” Jeff said.

“Why is he leaving clues?” Dana said to no one in particular.

“He may consider it a game like hide and seek. Psychopaths are usually intelligent people who consider themselves superior to others. I think he might be taunting the rest of us.”

When nothing else was found, they drove back to the original site, where Jeff showed them the drag marks and probable site where they body had been found.   ...

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

While you think about how you might rewrite that exchange here's the author's biography from Amazon.

The author of 20 books, Jean Henry Mead has published ten nonfiction books and ten novels, including the Logan & Cafferty mystery/suspense series and Hamilton Kids' mysteries. She also writes Wyoming historical novels (Escape, A Wyoming Historical Novell and No Escape, the Sweetwater Tragedy). The national award winnning photojournalist began her writing career as a news reporter in California. Her award-winning articles have been published domestically as well as abroad, and she has served as a news, magazine and small press editor. She also established the Western Writers Hall of Fame now housed at the large and impressive Buffalo Bill Musesum in Cody, Wyoming.

NOTE: Jean Henry Read did a stint as a news reporter. 

Do you understand how this ingredient in a writing career is vital?

Marion Zimmer Bradley did it.  Allan Cole did it.  The list is endless.

Non-fiction is where the money is in wordsmithing. 

So you should read Gray Wolf Mountain with an eye on the dialogue, and what you might change to transform it to another genre, or to create different characters.

Let's study that one little snatch from page 139 of the Kindle edition.

Notice how SHORT the utterances are.  The group is standing around a piece of evidence (at the 60% mark of the novel, just past the half-way point) feeling the threat of physical violence (which is realized) and trying to "profile" the killer from where Rhonda Bailey's body has been found.

They have discovered a cigarette lighter with initials on it somewhat down stream from where the body had been found.  Whose is it?  How did it get there?  Why didn't the police find it?  Etc.

Notice the SHORT sentences, question, answer -- think of a bouncing ball going around a conversational circle.  This is not an interrogation of a suspect, but a brainstorming session over a problem.  The technique applies to any scene where people do group problem solving. 

Notice how intact Mead keeps that 4th wall.  The characters are talking to each other, not aware we're listening.  They aren't giving US information.  There's no, "As you know, Bill, ... etc."  They aren't describing the scenery to each other for our visual delight.

They are intent on problem solving, and aware of impending threat from a crazy guy.

So let's consider what we might do while reading (remember on Kindle you can insert NOTES as you read, and highlight and bookmark text so this kind of study is easy.)

-----------FREEHAND REWRITE ---------------

She reconsidered Rhonda Bailey's connection to all this. 

“How far are we from the cabin where Gus was found?” she asked Tom.

He glanced around at the pine forest.  "You think the killer lived nearby?"

"Well, both bodies were dumped in the same stream." 

He glanced around at landmarks only he recognized. “About a mile as the crow flies, I’d say.”

“Do you think the sheriff’s deputies have searched the cabin for clues to the killer’s identity.”

“I’m sure they have.”

Dana paced, muttering. “Why didn’t the killer bury the bodies instead of hauling them here?"

"Maybe he wanted them found?"  Tom followed kicking at debris, looking for more evidence.

"As a warning to others to stay away?” she guessed. 

“Looks that way,” Jeff inspected the creek.

“Why is he leaving clues?” Dana said to the silent trees.

“Psychopaths are usually intelligent people who consider themselves superior to others. I think he might be taunting the rest of us.”

"You think he may be playing a game like hide and seek?"

Tom nodded slowly.  Jeff watched him a moment, then headed back for the car, saying, "You should see the drag marks where we think the body was moved." 

-------------END FREEHAND REWRITE---------

Notice how much longer that approach makes it than the original.

If you've got a rewrite order that says to reduce the length, those are exactly the changes you'd make to shrink it. 

Also notice how the characters and situation morph under those tiny changes.

NOW ON TO THE MEAT OF THE MATTER

Society, civilization, mythology and technology are all components of every world you must build around your characters.

Even when working in contemporary Romance, or near-time science fiction romance, or Urban Fantasy Paranormal Romance set in sort-of the current day, you have to "invent" your world from the point of view of your main character.

Even the world seen by your subordinate characters if you use them as Point of View characters has to "match" the world as it is perceived by your Main Character. 

Putting these pieces together into a work of art is an art in itself, like mixing oil paints to smear on a canvass and suggest (using 2 dimensions) a 3-D picture.  The human brain interprets the shadings and textures and creates the imagined 3-D image.  Reading a story in text-only, the imagination creates that extra dimension of emotion, of emotional connection. 

The best place to learn to understand what sexual seduction is all about is the study of Advertising, of PR, of spin-doctoring, of motivational speaking, of selling. 

A victim of seduction believes -- is deeply convinced -- that this is True Love, a Soul Mate.

A real Soul Mate knows what you mean when you tell them how you feel.

Your words resonate and produce behavior that confirms, that validates, your emotional life within the emotional life of the other.  Like music.  One string vibrates, the air transmits the energy, and the other string vibrates without having been touched.  That is resonance.

That's what advertisers mean when they say a "message resonates" with the public.  They mean that people who haven't heard the original message nevertheless repeat that message.

That's how love works when it is REAL.

Mimicking that effect is what the Lounge Lizard or Gigolo does.  His job is to accompany his employer and convince rooms full of people that his employer is not paying him money to be with her, but that she is a prime example of womanhood because she has won his high regard (and just LOOK at him; wow! she must be something!). 

Having arm candy around you paints a picture of you, doctor's your spin, makes a statement about YOU.  It isn't real, and most people in that formal party do know that, but nevertheless the glow of approval of that Arm Candy individual paints the employer in a light different from the actual reality.

So making that emotional contact, and hitting the "note" that resonates is an artform.

After centuries of hit-or-miss, that artform has been codified into a science.  The science is called PR.  It is the art of convincing you to do what you would never do under mere hypnosis -- behave in a self-destructive manner untrue to your own character.

These techniques can be applied to your benefit.  A Gigolo looking for a job may notice you hunting the audience for a suitable man to hire and present himself using what he's noticed (Sherlock Holmes fashion) about you.

They can also be applied to induce you to behave in a way that benefits the Gigolo not you.

From a writer's point of view, the Gigolo or Lounge Lizard role is identical to that of today's politicians.  What you see is not what you get. 

Politicians hire PR people

I've discussed PR and its origins and uses many times.  Self-publishing writers have to master this branch of psychology -- or hire a firm to do it for them just as publishers do.

Here are some links in case you're not familiar with the kind of "arm twisting" tactics developed to "control" the behavior of herds of people.

FROM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_public_relations

----------QUOTE-----------
Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing the spread of information between an individual or an organization and the public.[1] Early forms of public influence and communications management have existed since the dawn of ancient civilizations, but the professionalization of the discipline occurred in the early 20th century. Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays helped establish the field as a professional practice in the United States, Basil Clarke and Sir Stephen Tallents pioneered the field in the United Kingdom, while Arthur W. Page is considered the father of corporate PR.

The field became more established after World War II, in part due to talent from war-time propaganda efforts moving into the private sector.
----------END QUOTE--------

For another angle on the explanation of PR:
http://www.slideshare.net/Brett509/public-relations-theory-537389

And note this:
http://www.fullsail.edu/ is a school for animation artists, especially videogame builders, where you can get a bleeding edge tech degree to work in the Public Relations (advertising) field where image is everything.

Dig down and you'll find this very math-driven field of PR is pretty much the art of the con man, the grifter, the trickster. 

In January 2014, we discussed an example of this kind of psychological judo that can let an advertiser throw you over the shoulder and cart you away.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/01/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-8.html
--------------------QUOTE---------------
Statistics have proven such accurate predictors of the behavior of large populations of otherwise dissimilar individuals (people, yes, but this would apply to non-humans as well) that people use those numbers to create their opinions.

And a growing number of young adults are using statistics reports "backwards."

Using statistics forwards means collecting data on individuals and predicting how large numbers of individuals will move together in the same direction.

For example: how many iPads will Apple sell in the next six months?  How many people will upgrade from a Samsung to an iPad (and think it's an UPgrade?).

Those are questions statistics can answer accurately.

Will you upgrade from a Samsung or Kindle to an iPad and think it an UPgrade?

Statistics can't answer that.  It would be using statistics "backwards" to predict your behavior based on the behavior of a majority, or even a significant minority of people "just like you."

But your friend you go to lunch with at work might use released statistics to make a confident assumption about your future behavior.  That lunch conversation can become the core of a novel's conflict by Integrating that THEME (working statistics backwards) into the WORLDBUILDING (contemporary Romance).
---------------END QUOTE--------------

Since we have been conditioned, in school and in news reports of STUDIES, and in doctor's offices where prescriptions are given (or not) based on statistical studies of the effects of the medication rather than on experimental evidence of how this medication affects you, therefore we tend to skip over the inconvenient truth that the "average" response to anything has no relevance to you, personally. 

The systematic, repeated dunning in of the message "statistics show" means "you are average" by PR techniques has thwarted every math teacher's strident insistence that statistics can not be worked backwards. 

One primary PR technique is the appeal to "experts" -- i.e. people who know better than you, and the subliminal message that you better be afraid of authority and do as experts say because they know better than you.  Fortunes have been poured into perfecting statistics because they can be used to bolster that argument.

So besides greed, fear, and insecurity are traits the grifter activates in a Mark.  The Lounge Lizard targeting a client has perfected the appearance of power and authority.

Stop and think a moment about that.  Remember the watchword of all story telling is SHOW DON'T TELL.  Think how you would show rather than tell how your Gigolo character sweeps his Mark off her feet -- then think about what she would do once she figures out what he did to her.  Creative retaliation is a way to SHOW not TELL.

The art of the con man, the grifter, the trickster, uses the traits of your psychology as weapons against you, just as the con man uses greed.

If you have no greed in you, no con man can have any effect on your behavior -- because without greed you have no fear of loss and are not in awe of authority but choose to obey of your own free will. 

In other words, without greed, you can not be forced to do anything because the only ones who have authority over you are ones to whom you have given (thus may rescind) authority. 

Should such an authority induce you to act against your own best interests, you will not do it. 

In fact, even if such an authority claims this action is in your best interests, you will not do it -- because if your mind is not clouded by greed that induces fear-of-loss and makes you tremble before "authority" that threatens to strip you of whatever you treasure, then you will see it is not in your best interests to comply.

Greed within us allows those among us who are greedy for power to attain power over us. 

That's an abstract statement (a TELL not a SHOW) about how the greed mechanism of the human subconscious shapes our civilizations (all of them back to the dawn of time).  To use that principle in drama you must SHOW it, not TELL it. 

So the absence of greed which allows for resistance to authority translates easily into plot where you can best show without telling that the individual has no greed.  That embeds characterization into action. 

By now you've seen the film, LONE SURVIVOR -- a perfect example of characterization embedded in plot where the US Soldiers let the shepherds go instead of killing them to insure the squad's safety.  That scene is why you cry at the end of that movie.  If that characterization had been done with tell -- people talking about these soldiers back in the barracks -- you wouldn't cry at the end.  Pay particular attention to the dialogue in that scene.

Here is an omnibus of a duo-logy I wrote about a Lone Survivor who is not human rescued by a human battleship engaged in an interstellar war. 



Controlling the behavior of others by activating their Greed is a principle that pre-dates modern psychology -- you find it in the Ten Commandments! 

Where it says do not covet your neighbor's ass, wife, property etc -- DO NOT COVET is code for do not be greedy. 

Want what you have and you will have what you want.

Violate that one commandment and every con man in the world will gravitate to you because you have Mark written on your forehead in bright fire.

But both men and women who have not yet found their Soul Mate harbor a greed for that experience of resonating with another Soul.

We are greedy for a whole orchestra of souls, children and family, to resonate with.  We are at rest only when surrounded by those we resonate with.

That is the nature of the human being.  Remember the article I linked in a previous post about how a married man's testosterone level drops as his kids are born -- if he spends his time with wife and children.  It's an effect beyond merely having sex with his wife.  Family tames the aggressive, trouble-making tendencies of excessive testosterone. 

We are all greedy for that experience of rest -- and the mere promise of it (a hot-sexy Gigolo image) will ignite that greed.

But understanding that the promise is an illusion breaks the Gigolo effect and turns the greed to disgust.

How many people know enough math to understand what's being done to them by "commercials" and that a Lounge Lizard is a walking sandwich board commercial!.

The concept "Lounge Lizard" refers to a person who goes where the "action" they are looking for tends to congregate.  The "Lounge" is some kind of high class drinking establishment, and the action sought is rich employers looking for an employee. 

In other words, the person seeking to influence the behavior of someone goes to the place where lots of people open to being influenced congregate. 

For example, an advertiser selling expensive cars wants to advertise on a TV show watched by people who have a lot of money. 

How many people understand the value of words?  Especially the words in advertising copy?

Here is an eye-opening article on the shift in TV advertising for Apple products between 2013 and 2014.  (read this excerpt with an eye to casting it into dialogue as demonstrated above in the rewrite exercise.)

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/ad-day-apple-borrows-dead-poets-society-evocative-ad-ipad-air-154937

--------QUOTE FROM ARTICLE-------------
 Using the Dead Poets source material is a curious choice. You might think going with third-party copy—the film was written by Tom Schulman, who won a screenwriting Oscar for it—betrays a continuing lack of confidence in the brand's own voice, or at least the current expression of that voice. And maybe it does. But still, it's an inspired passage that fits wonderfully with the Apple brand.

"Medicine, law, business, engineering—these are noble pursuits, and necessary to sustain life," Williams (as Professor Keating) says in the voiceover. "But poetry, beauty, romance, love—these are what we stay alive for." That message is pure Apple, going back to the "Think different" days as well as Justin Long's teasing of the spreadsheet-loving John Hodgman in the "Get a Mac" ads. Apple's business is art (and the business of art), not commerce—though the visual storytelling here cleverly shows the product contributing to both.
-----------END QUOTE---------------

Notice that's from a website called "adweek.com"  -- adweek is FOR advertisers, and as a self-publishing writer that would include you.

Do you understand the nuances of this article (read the whole thing). 

It reveals the way people trying to trick you think about you.

This article is about selling tech devices, but it is the same process used by a Gigolo or a Politician.  Trace out the reasoning, then trace that reasoning backwards.  The objective never articulated is to get you to part with your MONEY to buy a DEVICE.

Those who follow Apple on the financial market know there is about $400 worth of profit in every iPad Air (#5) fully loaded with memory (cost about $935).  Yeah, in the USA these devices are THAT overpriced. 

How does Apple get away with this? It makes similar profits on iphones and macbooks.

Advertising, that's how.

What's advertising?  PR.  What's PR?  Mathematics.

When you understand what Apple is doing to "get away with it" you will understand what Politicians do to "get away with it" (whatever "it" they've tricked the public into doing lately).  All advertising is trickery -- it's all seduction. 

If you're self-publishing, you have to understand how they do this and decide how you can employ it and still conform to your own sense of ethics.

Look at the tuition to Full Sail University linked above.  That is an expensive education, and only the best and brightest can manage to graduate from such a school. 

Full Sail University is a for-profit university and its graduates work on Oscar Winning pictures.  This school has already produced an army of soldiers taking the field to conquer and control your behavior.  And there are many other schools more specialized in producing high-skilled practitioners of PR. 

Understand this pattern in our real world.  Understand how this pattern developed historically, pivoting especially around WWII. 

Understand that your reader has no clue that this is being done, but she is unconsciously (and happily) dancing to the tune played by PR practitioners (selling everything from hair spray to anti-aging creams, from vitamin supplements to SUVs).

Now, worldbuild the environment of your story, and be sure to include this PR element.

The Gigolo is a PR expert-for-hire, ready to convince everyone at the party that he is your escort, and that you are Somebody because he admires you.  His admiration elevates you.  His job is to make everyone else admire you because of how he admires you.  It's an old artform, and a new mathematics. 

The Gigolo or Lounge Lizard (male or female variety) is the SHOW for this element of human nature that gives rise to PR, while the PR article on Wikipedia is the TELL for the same thing.  BTW "Lot Lizard" is slang for whores who use CB radio to lure truckers to truck stop lots for a cheap quickie. 

If you're building an Alien Romance novel, you have to know (but don't have to let the reader know) what character elements your Alien's Grifter or Gigolo uses to get a handle on a Mark.  What is the Alien's weakness?  Is it Greed and Covetousness?  Or something else? 

Among humans, the use of slang or circumlocutions like "Lot Lizard" is a sure sign that there's repressed Guilt underlying the choices of action, driving motivation.  So give your Aliens some oblique-speak idioms to designate their unsanctioned actions. 

The human strength is how we become immune to PR once we see the mechanism of it working on us. 

What is your Alien's strength? 

Now pit the human and alien lovers-to-be against each other using the Greed trait to create the conflict.  Then do the dialogue exercise demonstrated above using seduction as the subject, not finding a murderer (either one is problem solving).

Maybe your trio in this dialogue is an alien grifter team (as depicted in the TV Series LEVERAGE that I've written about:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/02/tv-shows-leverage-and-psych.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 6 - Use of Media Headlines

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration

Part 6

Use of Media Headlines

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

PREVIOUS PARTS IN THIS SEQUENCE OF POSTS:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/09/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-1.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/09/theme-worldbuilding-integraton-part-2.html

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/09/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-4.html

http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/10/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-5.html

And here we are at Part 6.  Remember the posts that have two skills and the word "Integration" in the title are advanced writing lessons - more a "meta" level of study, a study about a study.  We are examining in slow motion -- sometimes excruciatingly slow motion -- what happens inside a writer's mind before the flash of "inspiration" that causes the shout, "I've got an IDEA!" 

That level, before the idea surfaces, is usually where the beginner's fatal mistakes are made.  Errors made at that "before the idea" level of writing craft are un-fixable, which is the reason so many writing textbooks insist you must write a million words for the garbage can before you will turn out anything remotely publishable. 

If you want to build a fictional world -- no matter how close to this one or how "fantasy fraught" and far away from this one -- START here.

"Here" is right here in your reader's everyday reality.

Every work of fiction is a journey for the reader, up and away, out and away, far and away, to someplace or somewhen else than where they normally live.

That's both the enchantment and the value of fiction-reading -- an adventure into a point of view that is so different from normal, everyday reality that you can return to your work-a-day world and view it with new eyes.  You get the same effect from an expensive vacation!  You return to a world forever changed! 

That's what a writer provides to a reader that is worth the price of the book. 

So how do you do that?  What's the mechanism? 

It's very much like stage-magic.  Once you know the "trick" it isn't a trick anymore.

If you're "just" a reader (hey, guys, we need readers!), then you may not want to read this series of blog posts about how it's done.  On the other hand, sometimes knowing the trick enhances the effect. 

So look back over the previous 5 parts of this sequence on integrating Theme and Worldbuilding -- and you will find a lot of mentions of the use of "misnomer" as a dramatic device.

The misnomer is extremely powerful when used on "readers" (people who gravitate toward absorbing the written word as a way of having fun) because the reader is very verbally oriented in the way they conceptualize ideas.

Today, more young people are being trained to absorb concepts and ideas from images rather than the linear method of one word after another.

A picture is worth a thousand words, you know -- and nowhere is that more evident than in media such as the graphic novel.

EXAMPLE:


...is 321 pages of linear text



...is about 120 pages of pictures with balloon-dialogue snippets and barely scratches the surface of the contents of the linear text of the first volume in this shapeshifter/werewolf/romance series.

And the text novel has a sequel, too --



Which is described nicely as: Mated to werewolf Charles Cornick, the son -and enforcer -of the leader of the North American werewolves, Anna Latham now knows how dangerous being a werewolf is, especially when a werewolf opposes Charles and his father is struck down. Charles's reputation makes him the prime suspect, and the penalty for the crime is execution. Now Anna and Charles must combine their talents to hunt down the real killer -or Charles will take the fall.

And it really is that good!  Patricia Briggs is an excellent writer, toying with the outer edges of human/animal sexuality. 

So the misnomer is a technique that is most powerful in text, true, but has its applications to the "story in pictures" format used in film and in graphic novels.

Now let's think about how a writer, creating a fictional world, can use Media Headlines to draw pictures in words using the misnomer.

Remember, the theme-worldbuilding integration technique is of most value where you must condense the story into fewer words.  Today's published novels tend to run long -- writers trained to be succinct are having a very hard time expanding their stories to the necessary length.  But that trend will reverse as it always does.

Being a "professional" writer means being able to fulfill whatever requests an editor (who is getting requests, even demands, from the bean counters wearing suits) might toss out.  So the same story that occurs to the writer after reading a headline can be tailored to fit whatever constraints an editor with a budget needs fitted.

By using a HEADLINE -- perhaps glimpsed in passing by a character in your story, or perhaps about one of the characters in the story -- you can evoke IMAGES in your reader's mind, even though you are working in linear text.

And when you use such images, you can reduce the number of words -- i.e. the amount of printing space -- necessary to print your book.

So here's an interesting headline from last November that evokes thoughts of industrial espionage, always a fertile ground for both worldbuilding and plotting.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-29/the-curious-case-of-samsungs-missing-tvs#r=read

The Curious Case of Samsung's Missing TVs

It's a news story about some crates packed up with TV's inside, not-yet-marketed state of the art TV's, big industrial secret technology, that arrived at a trade show without said TV inside the crates.

The article speculates that a rival company might want such a TV to reverse engineer the new technology - steal a march on Samsung.

Who knows?  Who cares?  We're writers.  This is a story-idea playground of an article filled with wondrous plot twists we could use. 

But better yet, this headline is part of the everyday world of your readers, the world they want to get away from, get far enough away from to gain perspective on.

So extract the idea of industrial espionage, and look for another setting and a Romance twist to use for your story. 

And don't forget the MISNOMER technique. 

OK, here's a headline from December 2012 that might give you an idea.

http://news.yahoo.com/netanyahu-brushes-off-world-condemnation-settlement-plans-142559939.html

Netanyahu brushes off world condemnation of settlement plans

To your potential readers, such a news article would appear to be about the politics of the Middle East and the abysmal misbehavior of one faction (the Israeli faction that is relentlessly building houses where a faction of their opposition doesn't want houses built).

Take a closer look at how that headline is phrased and ponder how you can use it.

Did you spot the misnomer?

Unless you follow Middle East politics, you probably didn't spot this because you've only seen this one story about it, or one headline or TV news clip.

The brutal fact is that Netanyahu DID NOT BRUSH OFF anything.  He's not an arrogant person, but you'd never know that from USA news coverage.  Only arrogant people (real villains) "brush off" condemnation of their actions by oppositions that have sensible objections to the actions. 

KNOWING IT, though, knowing that Netanyahu is not arrogant, you can suddenly see the dramatic potential for a really, REALLY hot "Alien Romance" brewing in this misnomer! 

He didn't "brush off" his opposition.  A third party (media) is portraying his action as a "brush off" -- carefully choosing those exact words with their semantic loading of "only a villain would do this action" in order to portray an honorable, dignified and gentle individual as an arrogant villain spoiling to be taken down.

Consider that this headline appeared during a period when Israel was in the middle of an election fight as hotly contested as the Obama-Romney contest of 2012.

When you read the headline that says X "brushed off" Y, you instantly know who is the hero and who is the villain in that interaction. 

That's the nature of all MISNOMERS -- they reverse the positions of the admirable individual and the nefarious individual.  That's what makes the technique so insidiously powerful and so perfect for a writer to employ in a novel.

Remember, the essence of story is conflict.  What conflict is better suited to alien romance than the wrenching decision of who is the Hero and who is the Villain?

This is the core of many of the most successful Regency Romances based on the triangle.  It works in Paranormal Romance particularly well -- you have a woman who falls in love with an alien, and along comes another alien who falls in love with her.  But the two aliens are enemies (for some, very good, reasons)  Now she has to sort out which is the good guy and which is the bad guy.  And sometimes LOVE by itself makes her choose to go be with the bad guy, even knowing he's the bad guy! 

The absolutely firm, unquestioning belief that THIS is the Hero and THAT is the Villain can be planted in your reader's mind by just such a subtle trick as was used in this Netanyahu headline. 

Only those who have an independent information source know he's not a villain, and even armed with that knowledge, they will doubt Netanyahu -- because only villains 'brush off' legitimate objections.

Now, take your setting out of International Politics on this Earth -- remember the headline about disappearing TV Sets -- and put this MISNOMER technique of "brushing off" into an INTERSTELLAR INDUSTRIAL ESPIONAGE ROMANCE, and your reader will have no trouble leaping into your world, falling in love with your villain and being utterly shocked to discover the real hero is the other guy.

Think of the thousand things you don't have to explain if you use real-world elements like these, think of all those words you don't have to write so that you have room for the parts you do want to write. 

You might title it: Giving Your Alien The Brush-off  -- and see where that takes you.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com