Dialogue Part 2 - On And Off The Nose

Part 1 of this series was not labeled Part 1, but it is:

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

This Part 2 is an advanced lesson on writing.  Below you'll find a links to a plethora of relevant posts I've done here previously, because the subject of Dialogue integrates all the techniques I've discussed. 

And no, we're not talking here about characters who talk "down their nose" at other characters, or who stick their nose into others' business.  The metaphor is about "hitting it on the nose."  Saying exactly what you mean, defining things exactly, is "hitting it on the nose."  You "hit it on the nose" when you "reveal" something very concrete and specific about a murky topic, when you clarify matters, when you eliminate confusion, when you shatter an illusion. 

The term "on the nose dialogue" is from screenwriting, well, play writing too.  On the nose dialogue is one reason that a script would be returned unread.  If the first line of dialogue on page one is "on the nose" the script will be rejected. 

This is often true in novel or story writing as well, though you might get 5 pages to show you know how to keep dialogue off the nose. 

There is nothing more "murky" than the emotional life of a human being.  When you "reveal" that inner dialogue as spoken dialogue, you are writing dialogue that is "on the nose."  It's a tool in the writer's toolbox, and it can be used to devastating artistic effect, but first the writer must master that tool. 

And the first step toward mastery is definition. 

"Advertising copy" is a blatant example of "on the nose" writing.

An ad just says what it means.  If it doesn't, you get the effect we see with so many TV commercials (which I  have recommended you study for "show don't tell" techniques) where there's an amusing image or sequence, and you can't recall what product the ad is selling.

"Aflac" uses the repetition of the duck advising the injured that they need this insurance -- relying on the silly quack sound of the company's name to nail the message on the nose.

"Verizon" is having great success following Suzi's Lemonade stand to international corporation because of ease of communication using Verizon's tools -- but the commercial, while engaging, and on-the-nose about communications, doesn't differentiate Verizon from AT&T.  Suzy might do as well with AT&T or another carrier, we can't tell from the commercial.  But I do remember Suzy and I do associate her with Verizon, so it's a success. 

Who can forget the "Energizer Bunny?" 

So advertisements have to be "on the nose."  If you're selling a better razor blade, show it in the garage in a puddle as months pass, and not rusting.  Show someone picking it up, putting it in a razor holder, and shaving with it -- no cuts.  If you're selling razor blades, show a razor blade.  Show how yours is different from Gillette's. 

That's on the nose. 

People, on the other hand, in real life, don't talk "on the nose."

One of the reasons most books on the craft of writing don't actually help new writers learn the craft is that such books are usually about the craft -- i.e. OFF the nose, off the topic. 

If you pick up a writing craft textbook, what do you expect to find inside?  What topic should it cover?

As I was learning this craft, (and even today) the topic I keep hoping to find inside "how to" books on writing is what you do with your mind to create a story others will enjoy.  You know about the craft or you wouldn't have found the book.  Now you want to know the craft itself.  You want to do it. 

You need the concepts, some examples, and some ways to isolate specific craft functions and practice them in isolation. 

That's like a piano student learning scales instead of whole musical compositions. 

After you learn the scale, you try a short, small, composition using that scale, and you perform the composition.  You don't start learning piano by writing your own compositions (most don't.)  You start learning by performing someone else's compositions. 

Writing is also a performing art, as I have said I learned from my first professional writing teacher, Alma Hill.

I've introduced you to some of the "scales" involved in writing: worldbuilding, conflict, theme, plot, characterization, etc.  And now we're working on "Chopsticks" our first composition, "Dialogue." 

What exactly is dialogue?  Where do you get it? 

In real life, women tend to keep their conversation (not dialogue; that's for fictional characters) farther away from the nose than men do.  Workplace interactions (men or women in the USA) tend to be more on the nose than household interactions.

Of all the topics people converse about, Relationship and especially the Love Relationship, usually stay the farthest off-the-nose.  They have to be off the nose if they are to communicate real, reliable, meaning.

Yep.  The way to be reliably understood is to avoid saying what you mean! 

In other words, in certain circumstances, to communicate you have to say what you mean, and in other circumstances you have to avoid saying what you mean in order to be understood. 

Writers have to take that variation in behavior into account when creating dialogue.

Characters will speak differently to each other depending on where they are and what they're doing, as well as on who they are, and who they are to each other.  Every line of dialogue you create is a synthesis  of all the techniques we've explored so far. 

Perhaps we should coin the term "dialogue-building" because writing dialogue is very much like worldbuilding. 

Dialogue is not a recording of real speech.  Dialogue is to real speech as a Japanese Brush Painting is to a Photograph.  Dialogue is emblematic of speech.  It's symbolic of speech. 

Ultimately, great dialogue gives the firm illusion of real speech. 

The line between a reader and a writer can easily be defined as the line between someone who perceives dialogue as speech, and someone who can see through that illusion to the gears-wheels-and-grease inside the dialogue that creates the illusion of speech.   

People speak to each other because they have something to say -- to that person. 

Many people get upset if you forward something they've written to you on to someone they don't even know (or worse, someone they don't like).  The reaction is, "I would have written it differently if I'd known so-and-so would see it."  People talk that way, too.  Think about how specific our phrasing is in terms of who we expect to see or hear. 

We put our real message, the real information we want another person to believe, in "subtext" not "text."  That's why "keywords" don't really work -- to say something important, you don't use the vocabulary of that subject.  If you use the vocabulary of that subject, then what you are saying will not be believed.  It's the text under the text (the body language, tone of voice, choice of off-topic vocabulary, allusions, associations) that carry the real information.  That tendency to use subtext (to talk with your hands, and blurt "you know" every few words) is the part of communication that a writer must emulate in dialogue but without the "you know" interjections.  (because "you know" you don't really know which is why I'm telling you, "you know?")   


That's why we phrase things we say in a special and different way for each person we talk to.  The "subtext" or "relationship" is different, so the wording must be different. 

Here are some of my posts mentioning subtext:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/12/flintstones-vs-lone-ranger.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/05/tv-show-white-collar-fanfic-and-show.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/08/what-exactly-is-editing-part-v.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/02/how-to-change-perception-of-romance.html

To maintain the illusion that your characters are real, you must take into account how they would talk differently to this character than to that character.  That variance is learned under the topic of "Characterization." 

Does this character talk to his boss differently than he talks to his father?  If yes, then he's one kind of character.  If no, then he's another. 

Dialogue is not two characters talking to each other -- it's the writer talking to the reader through these two hand-puppets called characters. 

The quality of the dialogue-writing is judged not on what the characters say to each other, but on how firmly the illusion is maintained that the writer does not exist, that the audience does not exist. 

In stagecraft, that's called the Fourth Wall.  It's the wall between the audience and the stage, the transparent wall we look through into this other world where the characters live, but that the characters see as a solid wall.

Break that illusion, and POOF - the rest of your illusions are gone.  All that worldbuilding and arduous suspension of disbelief POOF, GONE.

So how do you maintain this illusion that these characters are talking to each other, not the audience?  You use the set of techniques I've discussed in this blog as "Information Feed." 

Here are four posts specifically discussing this topic, but from other angles. 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/sexy-information-feed.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/10/heart-of-light-by-sarah-hoyt.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/11/information-feed-tricks-and-tips-for_23.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/12/information-feed-tricks-and-tips-for.html

And you need to employ all the tips and tricks from my posts on the Expository Lump.  You must never use Dialogue for either "Information Feed" or "Exposition" because that breaks the fourth-wall, the illusion that these characters are real people, the illusion that they're talking speech not dialogue. 

Here are some posts on Exposition:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/08/source-of-expository-lump.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/02/dissing-formula-novel.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/crumbling-business-model-of-writers.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/08/source-of-expository-lump-part-2.html

Check out Part 11 of my series on Astrology Just For Writers which was posted on November 1, 2011

Here are some of my previous posts mentioning Dialogue:

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

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

Now, to the example that may illuminate all this for you, so you can practice this composition, this "Chopsticks" rendition.

Listen to a great writer (I'm not kidding, this is one terrific writer) play Chopsticks on his characters.

Here is Simon R. Green who has such complete mastery of all these techniques that he probably can't tell you how he does it. 

Here is a list of his more current  titles:

List of Simon R. Green titles

Here's a new series he's doing which uses such blatant "on the nose" dialogue in the most appropriately inappropriate places that you know it's done as broad comedy:



The opening chapter is a great example to learn from.

The characters are a field team of ghost hunters approaching a building and setting up their equipment. 

Green uses dialogue (which for these characters is workplace dialogue and should be "on the nose") to  give you all the worldbuilding exposition and feed you all sorts of information on the characters and their most recent adventures.  But he uses the "on the nose" dialogue to have the characters tell each other things the characters already know (a huge violation of all the rules of dialogue writing).

The genius in this piece is in the rhythm and pacing. 

Green has captured the very essence of the earliest science fiction style of awkward, blatant and even childish dialogue, and he's done it in such a way that you know he knows he's doing it to you on purpose.

He's playing with you, the reader, in a subtle way of buddies.  He telegraphs that he expects you to come into his world and play for a while, just for fun. 

Your Assignment, Should You Decide To Accept It  

Use the "Look Inside" feature on Amazon to get the first chapter (or download the Kindle sample). Or better yet, buy the book so you can finish reading the whole thing.  As soon as the characters finish with this building, they're off on yet another assignment that's even more dire.  So you can take this first chapter in isolation and work with it. 

REWRITE that first chapter, pulling all the dialogue off the nose, re-coding the exposition and information feed that's currently inside the dialogue into a combination of a) description, b) narrative c) internalized thoughts d) sensory impressions e) show-don't-tell imagery (you can add things and give the characters "business" with things) f) exposition.

Remember, the 4 kinds of text you find in fiction are:

a) dialogue
b) description
c) narrative
d) exposition

Ideally, each sentence or paragraph should be a smooth mixture of all of those.

Simon R. Green is one of the best writers working in this field today.  I couldn't have produced a piece this exemplary for you to practice on.  This will work for you as a dialogue "Chopsticks" composition to learn on only because it's so incredibly well done. 

This first chapter carefully avoids going "off the nose" even when it would have been easier. 

If you read his other books, (he has several dynamite series going) you'll see he does know how to do what you're just practicing here.   

It doesn't matter how good you already are at dialogue, you can benefit from this exercise.  I was doing this in my head as I read it, and laughing until my ribs hurt. 

Your assignment is to turn this archaic rhythm&pacing exercise into a much more "modern" sounding piece.  And if you can manage it, convert all the comedy into drama, or even horror, inject some Romance (not at all hard considering). 

Change the genre by shifting the dialogue off the nose.  Make up stuff about the characters, make them your own, just as you would if you were playing Chopsticks -- creating a unique rendition all your own just as you would if you were playing Chopsticks for the first time.

You know you have to throw away the result of this exercise -- don't plagiarize -- but play this Chopsticks composition.  Render it to the limits of your abilitiy, and you will grow. 

Just as if you were playing Chopsticks for the very first time, you really don't want anyone to hear or see you do this!  But the results will be visible in your writing forever. 

BTW: I just started reading another new Simon R. Green novel this one in his NIGHTSIDE series - gorgeously executed, solid storytelling, great work.   This is one writer worth studying carefully, on the whole, not just a few pages of one novel. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Astrology Just For Writers Part 11-The Fishtank Model of Romance

Most writers and readers don't want to know anything about Astrology, and that's fine.  There are plenty of other systems for parsing the patterns of human life.

A writer only needs one such system, but having several can give a writer the flexibility to work with vastly different audiences.  Adding Astrology to your toolbox can position you to take advantage of unexpected opportunities with unruffled aplomb.

But you don't need to become an astrologer, or even to "learn" astrology or do it.  You only need to learn to think like an astrologer, and to understand what lives look like from the point of view of someone well versed in this craft.

Here are the previous posts in this Astrology Just For Writers series that help you get the perspective we'll discuss next.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html lists posts on Astrology

And here are additional ones:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/01/astrology-just-for-writers-part-9-high.html

Part 10 was on August 30, 2010.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/08/astrology-just-for-writers-part-10.html 

And this is Part Eleven.  The intention is to collect this series into an e-book and make it available for download on simegen.com.

The 20 posts on the Tarot Swords and Pentacles that I've done here will likewise be published along with the discussions in volumes on Wands and Cups, plus a volume on how and why to study Tarot, and when and how to shun it.

Here are two posts indexing the 20 Tarot posts available.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_23.html

When using Tarot to structure a novel, never mention cards, suits, mysticism, foretelling the future, etc.  Keep your use of these tools "off the nose" and be able to say, "It just came to me."

To achieve that unruffled aplomb, that level of "Cool,"  in the face of the opportunity of a lifetime, the one thing a writer needs to learn about using Astrology in their writing is, just as with Tarot, never mention the name "Astrology" or "Natal Chart" -- or any of the planets or stars that Astrology tracks.  Never mention "influenced by" or "under a transit."  Not even "Horoscope!"

Mentioning the source is what Hollywood screenwriters call being "on the nose" -- or in the parlance of the narrative text writer, "telling" rather than "showing."

I've seen this "on the nose" error in text a lot lately, even from seasoned professional best sellers.  That happens because the editors don't catch it and send it back for rewrite.  Editors need to know this stuff just as writers do.

Lazy writers, or any writer just in a hurry or being lazy, tend to try to disguise expository lumps as dialogue or description.  When that is done, the dialogue or description comes out "on the nose."

Here are some of my entries about Expository Lumps:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/crumbling-business-model-of-writers.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-much-is-too-much-world-buliding.html

And there's another on August 23rd, 2011

Also see my series on Editing.  Here's the final installment, and it has a list of the previous parts at the top.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-exactly-is-editing-part-vii-how-do.html

A master craftsman writer portrays the life (and arc) of a character in a way that is familiar to the readers -- they know real people who've lived through that pattern (or died in it).  But you must not tell the reader how you found out about that pattern.  It just came to you.

There is a popular commercial running in 2011 for Progressive Insurance in which the iconic saleswoman shows a prospective buyer the "Bundling" machine.  You put your information in once, and get out two products in a box.

The buyer turns to her marveling and asks, "How did you think of that?"

She answers, "Oh, it just came to us."  Then looks over at a centaur shopping the shelves of bundles.

That line, "Oh, it just came to us."  is supposed to be a tickler, funny, amusing, memorable to the viewers.

What most viewers don't know is that it is the stock answer to that question in Hollywood.

It's so routine, and so stock, and so necessary when a producer or director asks a writer "How did you think of that?" that the "never let them see you sweat" rule kicks in automatically, and the only answer is a nonchalant shrug with, "Oh, it just came to me."  Saying essentially you have a genius that the nuts-n-bolts people who make your story real for viewers just don't have.  You are indispensable to the process, but not overly impressed with yourself.  It was an accident you thought of this ingenious solution.

This is so absolutely ingrained in the Hollywood culture that Blake Snyder ( http://blakesnyder.com ) of the Save The Cat! books insists this is the only way a writer can respond to that question.  He teaches writing, and goes out of his way to make this point.  There's skill, craft, and lots of sweat behind these ingenious solutions to production problems, but you as a seller of your skills must never let them see you sweat.

And that's true of the relationship between you and your reader as well.

You must never let the reader know how you know -- know what process you used to create the magic they adore.

It won't be magic if you do.

Think of a painter facing a well prepared blank canvass.  Most often, after settling on the subject, the painter reaches for charcoal not pigment, and maybe a ruler, and draws in a whole lot of very faint lines later to be erased.  Those lines set up the composition, the perspective, the point of view from which the subject's inner nature will be revealed.  The painter deliberately plans how the viewer's eye will sweep across the images, and what they will notice first, what next, and what will be in focus and remembered.

Yes, it's all very deliberate skill in painting.  It's learned early and practiced like a musician practices scales until the painter can have an image "just come to him" and boom, it's on the canvass and you never know what happened even if you were watching.  The Master Craftsman usually isn't conscious of "what happened" either -- he really lives the "it just came to me" moment without asking himself how that happened.

Teachers on the other hand have to unravel that "just came to me" moment and convey the individual skills to the craftsman one at a time, in boring repetitive drills.

That's what we're doing here in this blog for writers who want to figure out how better writers achieve those marvelous effects.

Today's craft point is a look at Astrology from the writer's point of view.

So let's look at the two lead characters in a Romance.  Blake Snyder's SAVE THE CAT! series of books on screenwriting, says all Romances belong to his "genre" called Buddy Love.  I recommend you read those books.

Blake Snyder On Amazon

Also, because of the encroachment of graphic novels, film, webisodes, games, and other visual media on storytelling,  today's text-narrative writers must incorporate the pacing and visual emphasis that fiction consumers have become accustomed to.

So I recommend getting Snyder's screenwriting SOFTWARE that goes with the books, and using that to lay out the structure of your novel.  I am particularly involved with that software right now because I'm a beta tester on version 3.0 and I really love the improvements.

You can find it at blakesnyder.com or Amazon.  The software is also called SAVE THE CAT!  You can also find it on professional screenwriting software sites like Final Draft.  It's integrated with Final Draft 8

So now you're looking at a blank canvass to create your characters, their arcs, and the story they must live through.

You've nailed the transit influences affecting them.  Since this is a Romance, of course Neptune is hard at their respective sensitive spots.  But other influences can fly through that long-arc Neptune transit as well.

So you need a mental model too understand what these two people are and why they act and react as they do.

And that model has to be comprehensible to your readers especially because you're not going to explain it "on the nose." 

Without learning astrology, what can you visualize that will tell you what is happening to this couple, this pair of Soul Mates, falling in love?

Visualize it like this, and see if this works for you.

A Soul incarnates at a particular moment.  Astrology captures the moment of birth in a flash-photo still shot called the Natal Chart.

That chart delineates the positions of the planets of the solar system, and the Sun and Moon, at the time of birth.  It further captures the two lines delineating the path to the horizon east and west, plus the point directly overhead at Noon - the highest point the Sun reaches on that day at that longitude and latitude.  The opposite point is directly under foot, opposite the Sun's peak of arc, midnight.  That line is called the MC, and defines the 10th House and the 4th House, the mystical purpose for taking this life vs. the foundation of the Home under the person's metaphorical feet.

The Ascendant defines the view of "reality" the person has from inside his life, and what others see when they look at him.  Opposite the Ascendant is the 7th House cusp, which delineates partnerships, significant others, spouses, and the public (when you figure what all those things have to do with each other, how they're all absolutely identical, you'll have an understanding you can use to write fiction.)

Different astrological systems of mathematics assign different ways to calculate the positions of the other 8 "House cusps" -- I favor Placidus, Tropical, and it works well enough for my purposes (creating characters).

This up/down, horizon to horizon framework delineates the support structure of this character's life.  When you put the planets, Moon and Sun, into the framework positioned relative to the  birthplace on Earth at that moment the baby draws first breath, you then have a giant clock with at least 10 "hands" moving at different paces.  You can get fancy, and delineate 20 hands to the clock.  But a writer doesn't need that.

You don't need to understand how those clock hands move as much as you need to understand that they're there, they're set with precision, there's no escaping, and everyone alive is utterly familiar with their permutations and combinations in dynamic effects.

That "setup" of life at birth is the part of astrology that lets you make your characters "the same" as Hollywood always wants, and as Manhattan publishers need and will buy.

When something has become popular (like Harry Potter) the purveyors of fiction strive to duplicate exactly what it was that sold so well..  And that's why they always want "the same but different."

Writers, however, have read a lot of books, and usually want to put their work forward as "different" and not at all the same.  "Different" feels like the essence of art, the essence of your soul. (because it is)

You can do "different" and get small readerships.  Or you can add in "the same" dimension and strike for larger readerships.  It's a choice.  Create a pen name for each career path.

But first see my entries on PEN NAMES.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/05/should-you-make-up-pen-name-part-ii.html

The Blake Snyder Save the Cat! books and software show you how to do "the same" without infringing on your personal "different" and thus unleash your full potential as a commercial writer.

Now visualize this giant clock everyone is born inside.  Each of us live inside a clock set to a different time zone, a unique (or nearly unique -- even twins are born at different times) time zone.

This clock forms the framework of your life, the outside of your life, not the inside.

Think of this framework as the walls of a fishtank.

Fishtanks come in a lot of shapes and sizes, but they have transparency in common.  At least one wall is transparent (think of the giant aquarium at a zoo).  Most fishtanks are transparent on at least 3 sides.

The tank you live in, your natal chart, defines the size and shape of your life just like the walls of a fish tank.

You can think of it as walling you away from what's out there.  Or you can think of it as containing a benign environment uniquely suited just to you, thus protecting others from your environment.  This should be familiar to SF readers of space adventures with intelligent aquatic creatures.  Metaphor?  Maybe. 

Unlike most fish, you can see OUT, hazily.  With distortion.  You can see the reflective walls of other people's tanks, and sometimes glimpse through those walls into the life of another.

In this (admittedly limited and distorted) analogy, your Soul is the fish.

Unlike fish, you can create, shape, decorate, personalize and customize your tank.  You create your inner environment.

What your Soul is capable of creating, how nicely you can arrange things, what you can "do with the place" is limited by your talent, determination, and other resources your soul brings into this life.

You live your life within your natal chart, within your clock, by the choices your Soul makes, and the resources and wisdom it has brought with it, and what it learns from this life.

The "clock" does not say "You will meet a tall, dark, non-human, stranger and fall in unrequited love."

The clock does not say a tall dark stranger will come into your life.

The clock says it's time to meet strangers, go find one.

Whether there's a stranger there or not, and how you respond to that particular individual stranger, is a matter of the Soul, not the clock.

It's not that there's no such thing as "destiny" -- it's that "destiny" is far more complex than the Ancient Greeks ever knew.

"Destiny" is crafted from the material at hand (via the clock, the shape of the fishtank, the limits of imagination in fixing up the place inside the tank), by freewill choices, but not just your own.  Everyone has free will and makes choices which you respond to.  And others respond to your choices.  You interact (i.e. fall in Love) with others who likewise live in fishtanks of their own, tanks you can sometimes almost see into, but never enter.

In my universe paradigm, there's a third force acting to shape and reshape "destiny" for each of us and all of us collectively - God.  But the fishtank analogy holds whether there's a third outside force or not.

So here your character is inside her fishtank, and is moving stuff around trying to make the place (her life) comfortable.  (i.e. has landed a plum of a job promotion, and really sees the big bucks coming soon)

And she decides out of pride of place to clean her tank walls nice and clear and transparent so she can see and understand the world (i.e. takes a course and learns something, or proves something).

She wants love, so she makes herself more visible, her real self, or what she wants to believe is her real self.

And what happens when she cleans her tank wall is that she SEES another tank out there because it's time to meet strangers, and she can now see through her own reflection to something that is not herself.

She sees another tank wall, and reflective though it is, it seems to curve around the edges of her tank very neatly, and with the angle just so, she can SEE the Soul swimming around inside his life.  Or she thinks she does.  Part of the image is a reflection of herself, but having cleaned her tank walls, she is seeing something that is not herself.  Thrill of a lifetime. 

Wow. He's gorgeous.  Just look at those sweeping, draping fins!

The two souls can get close, nudge their tanks right up to touching, so it seems the walls have merged into one wall, and they can create new life together.  But neither can leap over into the other's tank and swim there.

The analogy kind of breaks down because Soul Mates who marry do actually merge into one.  Those two tanks bond and stick together.

But the insides are always separate, even when most of the reflection effect at the tank surfaces is eliminated by bonding the two tank walls together.

Lives are SEPARATE -- Souls merge.

We each live in our fishtanks, isolated and alone.  But we can share a Soul, mate with a Soul.

Think of this analogy.  The two tanks come together, the walls fuse so they can almost just about see into each others' tanks (there's always reflection -- what we see when we look at others is a reflection of our inner Self).  So they move into such harmony that they each redecorate their tanks to match, so you can't tell it's two rooms.

Maybe she quits her job, and he quits his (ok, today it's more likely they'll get laid off), and they start a business together -- a shop, a newspaper, a blog-for-money operation, e-Bay sales, whatever.  They change their lives to harmonize.

That's what "Happily Ever After" -- the HEA ending -- actually looks like.

We talked about the Happily Ever After concept in a 4 part series the Tuesdays in October 2011 titled Believing In Happily Ever After.

Using the fishtank analogy of lives that are set up at Birth, and Souls trapped inside those lives at least for this incarnation, you can see immediately why people today just don't credit the Happily Ever After goal as realistic.

You can never really get inside another person's life.  You can't let them inside yours.

You can't even see inside other people clearly, which leads to misunderstandings.

Consider a good marriage where, after some time, one partner wanders off to live mostly in the far end of his tank, becoming mostly invisible from the mated tank.  Left alone, she ends up living at the far end of her tank, where there's a view into someone else's tank.

No matter how close some part of your life is to another's, or how visible, there's a part of your life they can't see or share.

That's what it means to be an individual, a unique person, a sovereign person.

Since everyone has that experience, it's easy to see why most people don't believe another person would deliberately live their life only in the corner of their tank that touches the other tank.

Until you mix in the Soul Mate dimension, that delineates the unique pleasure of being near another, willingly sharing a life (redecorating) for the sheer pleasure of the meaningfulness you find in the other's company, there's no way to explain Happily Ever After to those who have no experiential model for it.

That is, there is no way to explain unless you're a writer who has mastered show don't tell, the off-the-nose techniques Blake Snyder teaches so ably.  The genre that specializes in making the unbelievable real to the reader is Science Fiction and its more recent offshoot adult Fantasy.  When you mix SF/F with Romance or just plain Love, you get PNR and SFR.

PNR writers need a firm grasp of the esoteric or occult disciplines such as Tarot and Astrology to make the rules of magic of a constructed fictional world real to their readers.

Here is where you can find my novels, and my co-author Jean Lorrah's, to see how we apply these principles.

http://astore.amazon.com/simegen-20

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com