Believing In Happily Ever After Part 7 - The Writer's Lifestyle and Voice

Part 6 (which has a link to part 5 which links to previous parts of this series) is dated April 10, 2012:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/04/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-6.html

At the end of Part 6 we began talking about the trajectory of a writer's career and how it can be affected by decisions about what to write.

Look again at that quote from the screenwriting blog discussed in Part 6

http://gointothestory.blcklst.com/2012/02/screenwriting-101-jonathan-lemkin.html 

If you take "the wrong job" just because you've let your lifestyle drive you into needing a check, you will find the quality of your work deteriorating and it'll be harder to get another job (by this, the screenwriter is talking about WORK FOR HIRE -the exact business model that is freaking out L. J. Smith's fans.)

Here's something I know about Marion Zimmer Bradley.  She did take just anything that came along, writing, editing, odd jobs, anything!  She had kids to feed and bills to pay and she scrambled and scraped for years before the career triumph of having one of her novels made into a TV miniseries.

If you've read the Darkover novels in publishing order, you know that the quality of her work increased over the years.

But she did what that screenwriter is advising writers not to do.

What's the difference? 

Over her lifetime, Marion was a practitioner of many religions, an expert at considerable depth at many philosophies and worldviews.  She understood Tarot, Astrology, Magic, Christianity, Paganism, and much more.  She understood what they all have in common, the conclusion that behind it all there is a strong Hand that guides events. 

The theory of what that Hand is, where it comes from, how it manifests, how it treats this person differently from that person, etc etc -- all these mysteries of life, was always an open question for her, but one thing she always knew throughout all her adventures in life -- something is 'assigning' us our problems, and solving them makes us better, stronger and more able to solve the next one.

At least, that's what I saw (remember the commentary above here about memoir writing and facts) -- that's what I saw in her. 

That basic concept about the nature of reality is woven into all the Darkover novels she wrote, and it is something I think I was born with.  And so when I encountered the Darkover novels, I resonated to the stories in a way that was different from how I responded to other novels written at that time.

Marion, for the worldbuilding behind Darkover, invented a term for the psychic effects we experience as real but which somehow just can't be proved (or disproved actually). 

Science as we know it today is based on a "law" that Francis Bacon popularized, the system of empirical science based on the law of cause and effect.

Our whole Aristotelian worldview (I do hope you remember that from the Tarot posts) is based on cause and effect, establishing that when you do this, then subsequently because you did this, that happens.  This causes that.

Current politically correct philosophy insists that because cause/effect has worked so well to improve life on earth, that therefore there can and must be nothing else in reality except cause/effect.

Any phenomenon that is observed that can not be analyzed down to a cause/effect basis just isn't real.  Therefore it must be ignored.

Well, Happily Ever After is just exactly such a thing! 

Nobody has ever been able to nail the CAUSE for which the inevitable and repeatable, achievable by anyone EFFECT is Happiness, nevermind Ever After-ness!

Finding and marrying a Soul Mate is not a project one can embark upon by reading the textbook and performing the required actions.

So Marion came up with a catch-all term to lump together the entire non-scientific (not anti-scientific!!!) world of actions and events. 

She called the psychic and spiritual world "the non-causitive sciences."

As has been observed in Astrology for thousands of years before "science" was invented, very often the EFFECT can precede the CAUSE.

That is, what happens as a result of an action can happen before the action is taken. 

In modern science, this can be accounted for if you have been following developments at the edges of theoretical physics where the realm of magic is converging on the realm of science.  But we've still a long way to go.

So how does this apply to L. J. Smith?  I have no idea because I don't know L. J. Smith personally.  But the Vampire Diaries fans are resonating to her Voice which has to be inflected by her deepest philosophical notions, possibly notions she isn't even aware she has.  I keep finding such notions lurking inside myself, a constant revelation, so I assume others have them too.

So how is it that one writer can observe in himself and his compatriots in Hollywood that taking a job (writing a script) that is just for the paycheck can cause a deterioration in quality and marketability of the byline when another writer (in novels at the time) finds the exact opposite, that taking whatever COMES TO HAND increases skill quality and marketability?

I have a theory (well, 2 actually )about how that could be.  It might not be true, and might not apply to any of the writers mentioned here -- but it would surely make a grand foundation for a novel series.

There is a principle of Magic that says that if a Magician turns his/her Talent to lesser tasks than the Talent was gifted to him for, then the Talent will dissipate, not be renewed by the Higher Power that gifted him with it.

That could be what the screenwriter was observing. 

But there's another way to look at this process.

In Magic, there is a principle known as the Law of Abundance.

It's pretty well illustrated by the Biblical story of Mana -- how in the desert, when the Tribes camped, in the morning the ground would be covered in a dew-like substance that could be picked up and taken home to eat.  When eaten it would taste like whatever the person craved, and sustain them perfectly in energy and vitamins.

From that story is derived the concept that we work for this Higher Power, God Himself.  God pays our salaries, not the person who signs the check.

We are gifted with a Talent to make our way in the world, and a Lesson that we must learn and take out of the world with us when we die.  What work we are assigned is the work needed to learn that Lesson, and our Salary will come to us via another channel. 

In other words wealth itself is mana, or a Gift. 

In yet other words, your salary is not caused by your work.

Salary, sustenance, income, wealth are not part of the Scientific Universe. 

Work, tasks, difficulties, traumas, job, unemployment, success and failure, are not causes that directly result in wealth or poverty.

So, if you live in a world where there exists such a thing (right alongside Science and interacting with it smoothly and invisibly) as the non-causative sciences, then you accept whatever tasks, work, job, script contract that comes to you, and you do that work with all your might, all your strength, every last iota of Talent, ability, craft, and no-stone-unturned meticulous effort.

If you work with that attitude -- that the task is yours because God assigned it to you -- then you will, little by little, achieve the purpose of your life.

Meanwhile, sustenance will be provided, sometimes wealth, but inevitably happiness will accrue (even in poverty!). 

But wealth and happiness (two often incompatible things unless your Soul has achieved its lessons in this life) have to be understood not as a result of  what you do but of what you are, what you've made of yourself on a Soul level.  And it isn't a simple, scientifically understandable paradigm. 

The laws of cause and effect as they operate in material reality (Pentacles of the Tarot) do not apply at the level of Cups or Wands -- at least not exactly and without modification.

If you live in a science-only world, where no spiritual dimension exists or functions, then you have to believe that if you take on a shitty job writing some crap script for a very small paycheck, then you, yourself have caused your reputation to deteriorate so you can't get more work BECAUSE you made a wrong decision about what work to accept.

If you believe that your actions and your actions alone cause you to get work, then you must believe that your actions cause you to not-get work.

The belief that there is nothing but simple cause/effect operating in the world can become your religion, and anything that challenges that belief (such as an inevitable Happily Ever After) must be rejected with religious fervor.

If on the other hand you can understand your reality as managed by and even driven by a Higher Power, then you will look at your monetary problem in another way. 

You might conclude that you were given wealth beyond your spiritual level of development to handle (e.g. that you didn't give the 10% to Charity you should have) and so find yourself in poverty.  You will then pray, make ammends, pray real hard, and take whatever work comes along and do it with all your Talent and all your might.

This is what happens when people find themselves out of work and, despite pounding the pavement, can't find any opening.  So they go volunteer at a Hospital as a candy striper or at a Soup Kitchen or Homeless Shelter -- or teach Bible Study on Sundays, or whatever -- just DO something for others.

And then a break happens, out of nowhere for no reason anyone can see, and the person's life picks up, barreling hell bent for leather toward a Happily Ever After.

That's the stuff out of which stories are made because that's how real life really works.  (I know real people who've been through that process and I've followed the astrology of it all.)

So if you find yourself young, with writing Talent or storytelling Talent, you can regard that Talent as a "lethal weapon" with which to "wipe out the competition" and achieve Great Things (and maybe die of a drug overdose in some posh, or foreign, Hotel Room). 

After all, "you" are just a lump of meat, and it's a dog-eat-dog world.  You're never going to be Happy Ever After because there is no such thing -- there can't be because there's no such thing as a soul.  After all, brain research can account for every human trait and experience, including near-death and out-of-body so that proves there is no God.  What you, yourself do with your own hands is the only cause of events in your life.  So use your Talent to elbow your way to the top of the heap -- at least you can breathe a little up there.

OR -- you can look at the entire matter from different perspectives, not just that one narrow "Scientific" perspective.

Why did I put scientific in quotes?  Because real science keeps an open mind.  No matter how well proven any theory might be, it is always possible that NEW EVIDENCE can prove that theory wrong.  Science doesn't "believe" -- science only knows, and that knowledge is only tentative.

The Real Scientist admits of the possibility of the non-causal sciences -- even if she hasn't seen any evidence at all of such a thing.

It's possible to think it, so it might be true.  It might not be likely, and you might not want to bet your life on it -- but...

See?

So now read the following from my review column -- The False Hobson's Choice:

http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/columns/0212.html

That's part of a Series on Justice, and you'll find the index to the year 2012 reviews here:

http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2012/

That's my review column I've been writing for the paper magazine, The Monthly Aspectarian which is posted to their website lightworks.com then after the exclusive they paid me for has run out, it is archived on my site, http://simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/   

Science and Magic are not different things, not incompatible.  They are different coordinate systems, each useful for describing the same Universe.

A coordinate system is like a Point of View.  When writing a novel, you can shift the genre (remember the post on genre I linked here above) by shifting the point of view.

And that brings us back to the top of this topic.  A writer's LIFESTYLE "informs" the writer's "Voice" -- but Voice and Lifestyle are not connected by Cause/Effect -- they are interlaced via the non-causative sciences view of the universe. 

Some Voices irritate, send shudders through you.  Others soothe.  Others are as @MiriamSPia noted, boring. 

Boredom is, as most students of Magic know, the strongest of all Wards.

You want to keep something secret?  Make it boring. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com  
http://astore.amazon.com/simegen-20

Believing In Happily Ever After Part 6 - The Writer's Lifestyle and Happily Ever After

Part 5 of this series is:
http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/02/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-5.html

On this blog, I talk a lot about the business model of being a professional writer, about writing craftsmanship, and I talk a lot about the Romance story requirement of the Happily Ever After ending.

I talk a lot on this blog about fiction, fictional worldbuilding, and crafting a good story.

But let's take a moment to look at how a writer crafts the story of their own life.

On Twitter in February 2012, I sat in on one of my favorite chats, #litchat, where the topic was about a lawsuit (that seems to have merit as it describes egregious wrongdoing, but that seems to me to hold hidden threats to writer's freedom to create and communicate).

Here's the URL to a brief description of the issue:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=146661802

So #litchat kicked around the issue of "truth in memoir writing" quite a bit, showing that many writers and readers have only begun to think about this topic, and consider it deeply.

In this particular case it seems a memoir writer fabricated actions and events that never occurred - on purpose - just to popularize the book and allegedly donate money to a charity -- which may never have occurred.

The facts of the case seemed to capture more attention than the legal principle I find alarming -- that a court can decide what is or is not factual in a memoir -- (not autobiography, not biography, but memoir). 

Since I'm in the midst of writing a memoir this intrusion of law into subjectivity gives me a different perspective.  Call a spade a spade, I was freaked out by this lawsuit article!

The next day I ran into a post -- I think it was on google+ -- on a blog by a teenager who wants to become a writer (and likes the kind of stuff I like) who was just as freaked out by a discovery on literary contract law that I've known about since I was younger than she is. 

The post was about L. J. Smith (author of Vampire Diaries) losing control of her product, and her byline, and all her titles, having the publisher hire writers to write more stories in her universe under her byline.

That sort of thing has been "business as usual" in publishing, especially YA, longer than I've been alive, so ho-hum-yawn for me but a major freaking-out-discovery for this young writer-to-be. 

When I learned about this standard practice in publishing, I already had decided I wanted to be a writer (not that I would, but that I wanted to) but was only mildly curious that some of my favorite novel series (Nancy Drew for example) were written by a lot of different writers under the same byline.  I just wondered how they managed that miracle and wanted to be part of it. 

Here's the post by this very talented teen writer:

http://parafantasy.blogspot.com/2012/02/this-is-utterly-ridiculousi-cant-even.html

Now, keep in mind the memoir writer who "sold out" for money, the idealistic teenager getting a taste of real life as a writer -- considering the biggest thing in writing news these years is Harry Potter, and the writer writing all her own story and benefiting from it all, she has a reason to believe writers keep what they earn -- and put this together with how L. J. Smith is being hammered for being successful.

Think about Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and her legal battle to keep hold of her St. Germain as a Vampire concept.  (she won, but just barely, and only after years of court battles during which she had to switch to writing about Olivia and other female vampires who were "made" by St. Germain.)

When I learned about multiple YA authors writing a series under a joint byline with the worldbuilding and byline being created by publishers, I also learned that Films and TV drama were written the same way, though authors would get byline credit. 

I later learned that byline credit could be extremely fictitious, too!  But since I wanted to 'be a writer' I was merely interested in how they managed all that and still got paid.  (I now know that sometimes they don't get paid!  Getting paid is a different issue!) 

I do hope you've been following the blog by one of my favorite Hollywood writers who "tells it like it is" in Hollywood from a writer's point of view:

Here's an example:
http://allan-cole.blogspot.com/2012/02/follow-bouncing-beach-ball-part-two-and.html 

Yes, this is "The" Allan Cole!!! 

Here's the masthead of his blog:
---------
Tales sometimes tall, but always true, of Allan Cole's years in Hollywood with his late partner, Chris Bunch. How a naked lady almost became our first agent. How we survived Galactica 1980, with only the loss of half our brain cells. How Bunch & Cole became the ultimate fix-it boys. How an alleged Mafia don was very, very good to us. The guy who cornered the market on movie rocks. Why they don't make million dollar movies. And many more.
-------------

Now, with all this background in mind, I run into the following post on a blog that usually has very interesting, salient, and informative entries:

http://gointothestory.blcklst.com/2012/02/screenwriting-101-jonathan-lemkin.html

Here's the blog entry that caught my attention this time, just a quote in isolation from the context (which I am familiar with but don't think much about):

-----------------
THE SCREENWRITING BLOG OF THE BLACK LIST
Screenwriting 101: Jonathan Lemkin
Posted on February 14, 2012 by Scott

“If you let your lifestyle expend your last check, you then say yes to a really bad project to keep the checks coming. The quality of your work goes down, your reputation goes down, and it’s harder to get the next job. I’ve definitely taken the wrong job a couple of times, and it’s very hard to do your best work if you’re feeling like, ‘Oh, this is the wrong job.’”

– Jonathan Lemkin (Lethal Weapon 4), excerpted from “Tales from the Script”
--------------------

OK, now back to the main subject I blog about here, how to raise the reputation of ROMANCE GENRE - but in particular science fiction Romance, Paranormal Romance being a real focus (since I write vampires in love).

One of my followers on twitter @MiriamSPia (a writer, surprise-surprise!) commented on a guest post I did for another beginning writer who had asked on yet another blog post about the challenges of cold-pitching a project at an agent or editor at a convention (being SF fans, they are planning on being at the Worldcon in Chicago 2012 -- worldcon.org for info).

The Guest post was for @Madison_Woods and it's in two parts.  Here's the first part which discusses the origin of Genre showing how a new writer can use a particular understanding of genre to create a pitch that will sell.

http://madisonwoods.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/genre-tuesday-guest-post-from-jaqueline-lichtenberg-part-1/

It went up on Valentine's Day, at the same moment as the following post which I did for Alien Romances:

http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/02/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-5.html 

which discusses the TV Series ONCE UPON A TIME.

Miriam commented on twitter:
I think its that "happily ever after" may seem boring and peaceful to outsiders.

As I've established in my posts here about Happily Ever After -- and the other posts linked in those posts mostly about how a writer uses THEME to do "worldbuilding,"  my best analysis is that the ability to suspend disbelief and enter a world ( remember "liminal" from the Genre Guest post) where there is a genuine threat that a situation will finally resolve with a Happily Ever After Ending (yes, threat! - to some people happiness is more threat than reward) depends entirely on the ability to include GOD in your model of the universe.

That doesn't mean you have to be "religious" or "spiritual" or anything like that.

It simply means you need to be able to STIPULATE that maybe there could be such an extra-reality entity orchestrating events, creating souls.  Some people can't stipulate that premise -- it's just way to scary.  So they can't cross that "liminal" threshold that the Guest Poster prior to my Guest Post talked about in such scholarly terms. 

Here's the guest post about "liminal" experience:
http://madisonwoods.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/genre-tuesday-with-dr-harrison-solow/ 

To accept the idea that there is HAPPINESS in finding a SOUL MATE -- you need to accept the idea of SOUL, which means humans aren't just meat.  There's something else to us.

What that is, where it came from and how it works can be open questions, but they have to be questions somewhere in the reader's psyche.

Now, for those who have followed my posts here on Tarot and Astrology, you know that I've used these esoteric tools to show you how to do the worldbuilding (hopefully invisible to the reader) that supports the foundations of story upon which you can build a plausible relationship that hurtles toward an "inevitable" Happily Ever After resolution of the main conflict.

Here are index posts to those posts in case you missed them:

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

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/04/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me.html

The sense of "hurtling" and the sense of "inevitability" of the Happily Ever After ending do come from using tools in those index posts, yes, but they also come from the way the writer herself lives her personal life, and her professional life.  Or maybe it's vice-verso -- that you live a certain way because you understand such tools.

As I pointed out, these aren't the only philosophical tools around that produce this effect.  Choose your own tools, but master them to the point where they are fully integrated not just into your novels but into your life.

Examine what this teenager writer-to-be has said, (and what the comments on that post add up to) about how precious L. J. Smith's "touch" on this Vampire Diaries material is.

Think about the severe shift in the "feel" of the Darkover novels after Marion Zimmer Bradley was no longer writing them -- that transition is less jarring because the turnover to her successor was gradual as she became too ill to do the actual work.

What exactly is that quality that we treasure so much in the VIBRATION that a particular writer injects into material?  We often term that the writer's "voice" and it's terribly illusive for new writers to get a handle on.

The truth is you can't hear your own voice the way others hear it (not even in recordings, and not when reading words you have written).

One vital ingredient in a writer's "voice" is how they live their lives, professionally and personally.

Look again at that quote from the screenwriting blog. 

If you take "the wrong job" just because you've let your lifestyle drive you into needing a check, you will find the quality of your work deteriorating and it'll be harder to get another job (by this, the screenwriter is talking about WORK FOR HIRE -the exact business model that is freaking out L. J. Smith's fans.)

Here's something I know about Marion Zimmer Bradley.  She did take just anything that came along, writing, editing, odd jobs, anything!  She had kids to feed and bills to pay and she scrambled and scraped for years before the career triumph of having one of her novels made into a TV miniseries.

If you've read the Darkover novels in publishing order, you know that the quality of her work increased over the years.

But she did what that screenwriter is advising writers not to do.

What's the difference? 

We'll look carefully at that difference next week in Part 7 of Believing In Happily Ever After.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

You can find my January 2012 release THE FARRIS CHANNEL and 11 other books in that series (some by Jean Lorrah), plus my other novels, 3 with audiobook versions at
http://astore.amazon.com/simegen-20

Greed Is Good?

Gordon Gekko, fictional Wall Street Power User, dwells on the mantra

"Greed Is Good."

Here's a quote from:

http://www.timeslive.co.za/entertainment/article525768.ece/Gekkos-ex-learns-greed-lesson

---------QUOTE------
 "Greed is good" was the maxim of Michael Douglas's 1987 film Wall Street. Now, his former wife appears to have taken the lesson to heart.

Diandra Douglas is suing the actor for half of his income from the new sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps - though the couple divorced in 2000. The Oliver Stone film is due out in September, with Douglas reprising his role of Gordon Gekko - the self-styled "master of the universe".
--------END QUOTE---------

CNBC ran a poll on Friday July 1 asking if viewers thought greed is good.  It was nearly a split decision, from the way they asked the question.  They didn't specify good for what.

I'm telling you, greed is the writer's best friend! 

It is a perfect, High Concept character motivation.  Nobody, reader or viewer, needs an explanation of what greed feels like, or what it's like to go up against someone fired up with greed.

Now, beyond that, the thematic discussion makes perfect fuel for either a soft-sweet romance or a hot-spice romance, and you can even found a raging action-romance on it.

Greed is a good motive for a protagonist who "comes to his senses" because of love (or a good knock on the you-know-what) and it's a great motive for a villain who gets his comeuppance good and proper.

We discussed the film Toy Story 3 last week, July 13, 2010 on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com

On http://www.blakesnyder.com/2010/06/25/toy-story-3-beat-sheet/  you can read the analysis of Toy Story 3 and see just how important THEME is to this light-entertainment film that isn't supposed to draw audiences seeking "serious thought."

You should also note this entry on blakesnyder.com
http://www.blakesnyder.com/2010/07/02/kieran-kramer-saves-the-cat-and-so-much-more/ where a NOVEL is analyzed for "beats" --  can you see the trend in Romance there?  Just as I pointed out in my July 13 post noted above.  Theme and Romance and Novels and SCREENPLAYS go together.

Now, plot some stories with greed as the main theme subject.  The word "greed" by itself isn't a theme.  It can be a motif, a character motivation, or almost any other element in a story.  Make it a theme by taking a position on the subject.  "Greed is good" is a great starting point, but move on from there.    

Challenge yourself to a writing exercise.  This is like a pianist doing scales rather than playing an entire piece. 

1) Create a POV character who hates greed (because he/she is riddled with it and rejects Self). 

2) Create a POV character who lauds greed and proves (as Gekko) that greed is the personality trait to foster if you want to get rich or stay rich. 

3) Create a SUPPORTING ROLE character who fights greed in human society.  Generate a POV character from the supporting role (B story character), a POV character that the supporting character can redirect.

4) Create a Villain or simple antagonist who either embraces Greed or eschews it, but does so with way too much force. Explain why he/she's so obsessed. 

5) Create a character whose hidden fear is that his inner greed will overtake him - perhaps he starts out living the severe austerity of a street-begging Monk with a bowl and a robe, no sandals, and suddenly has to command a galactic fortune that's shrinking alarmingly fast.

6) Create a greed-theme based character with your own formula for a character.  Then build a world to display that character's lessons in greed -- such as Wall Street was chosen to display Gekko's philosophy.

Remember all the TV Series you've seen using Confidence Men (White Collar rules the roost at the moment) as lead characters. In the grifter's world, the handle they look for in a Mark is Greed. 

If you don't have greed activated in your character, if your greed doesn't rule you, no grifter can possibly get you to do anything against your best interests - and the grifters good at their trade, the ones who might succeed, won't even try you.  There are plenty of "Marks" in the world who wear their greed on their sleeves.  You don't have to be one of them.  That's a theme.  Work it every which way. 

The reason these exercises are relevant to success in the story marketplace today is the same reason CNBC and film makers are shouting about this film "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps." 

We as a society will be, possibly for the next 20 years, debating how to "govern greed." 

I discussed the 20-year fiction-taste trend cycles here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/11/astrology-just-for-writers-part-6.html
and here
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/11/astrology-just-for-writers-part-6.html

It's Pluto transiting Capricorn.  Capricorn is the natural 10th House of Vocation and Government and is ruled by Saturn, Restriction and Discipline.

The financial meltdown of 2008-9 coincided with Pluto making stations on the USA Natal chart's 8th House (other people's money, inheritance) -- and for a Nation, 8th House is all about taxes.  Pluto is all about the hidden world beneath the world, and the nuclear magnitude power that seethes down there.  Pluto rules the Natural 8th House (Scorpio) just as Saturn rules the Natural 10th House (Capricorn). 

Greed is a natural desire magnified beyond all limits.

We have a natural awareness of the possessions of others (8th House), and the Values of Others (also 8th House).  The 8th House is naturally opposed to the 2nd House, our personal Money, Possessions, and Values.  So we're always comparing what we have to what others have.

The problem comes from coveting what others have.  When that natural tendency to compare gets magnified, it becomes a desire FOR what others have, not just curiosity.  Magnify that and you get Greed. 

Pluto's main effect is just exactly that, magnifying.  Pluto releases that subterranean nuclear level (super-volcano magnitude) power into the channel of a natural, normal, ordinarily good, human tendency of being aware of what's around us. 

So it's entirely possible we may see the whole USA society confronting a government (Saturn) exploding with unbridled (Pluto unbridles) greed for control (Saturn) especially of "other people's money" (8th House).


Or it might not go that way.  Don't let your imagination fail here.


http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/06/where-expert-romance-writers-fail.html

People will be on all sides of this issue, subliminally worried about it and confused because the "Conservatives" who are deepest into Christianity pound the table about Greed as a Sin, while the rest of our world keeps trying to de-demonize sins in general, pounding the table about acceptance of what used to be taboo because it's based on primitive superstitious religion. 

That's a CONFLICT, in case you didn't notice. 

And so there's a building audience that will be grabbed by fiction that discusses all sides without taking a side. It's a puzzle everyone will be working on solving.  

Grab your piece of this action with all the greed you can muster.

But once you have done that, stuff that greed back into the lock-box that your emotional anti-virus software keeps for you. 

When doing business as a writer, keep your greed completely out of the transaction.  Agents and Editors will blacklist you if you don't.  They won't deal with someone who wants more than they're worth.

But if you don't know exactly what your product is worth, you will get taken to the cleaners.  (you know I love cliches for a reason).

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Toystory 3 Analyzed for "Beats"

Read this: 
http://www.blakesnyder.com/2010/06/25/toy-story-3-beat-sheet/ 

CAUTION: that analysis contains "spoilers"

I don't accept that any good story can be "spoiled" by knowing what will happen before you read/see it and I've discussed why in these posts:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/03/prologues-and-spoilers.html

And

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/writers-eye-finds-symmetry.html

The analysis of Toy Story 3 is where you'll find how the film fits neatly onto the Beat Sheet developed by the late, great, Blake Snyder.

http://www.blakesnyder.com/tools/ is where you can download the beat sheet to use.

It's explained in detail in Snyder's
Save The Cat! screenwriting series

Now what has this screenwriting trick to do with solving the problem of why Romance is not the most respected genre in publishing?

Where is the Nobel Prize for Best Romance Novel?

Blake Snyder's Beat Sheet - that's where.

What is that "beat sheet" and where did it come from?

Snyder tells in his books how he watched hundreds of films, over and over, and extracted the "beats" (at what elapsed time each story-development plot-point is reached).

He found that all the widely heralded, highly regarded, raved about, high box office grossing films all had the exact SAME STRUCTURE.

It isn't a "rule" some gate-keeper in Hollywood made up and imposed.

It's a habit evolved by producers from audience feedback.

They learn how to do it by doing it.

On Twitter, I recently exchanged notes with a producer who had posted a tweet of advice saying learn to please an audience. So I tweeted back, prodding with "how do you learn to please an audience?" and he retorted - by getting up on stage of course.

I didn't fling back my writerly response, "I'm a writer, not an actor!"

It wouldn't have done me any more good than it ever did Dr. McCoy.

But I thought about it until this morning I found the link to this Toy Story 3 blog post in my mailbox.

Also yesterday, my fanfic writing friend whom I used for this writing lesson on converting exposition to action -
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/05/tv-show-white-collar-fanfic-and-show.html

- mentioned that she has found her speed and facility with plotting increasing as she bats out tiny vignettes based on the TV show White Collar and gets reader feedback.

She can really TELL when she has done it correctly. The response to a well plotted piece is orders of magnitude greater than the response to an ordinary piece.

And that's exactly why I recommend fanfic writing as a way to learn this trade. It's how writers do what actors do in Little Theater. Learn to please an audience. What those producers whose blockbusters Blake Snyder studied have that we don't have - is just that, HOW TO PLEASE AN AUDIENCE.  And Snyder found and codified the secret.  The Beat Sheet, and his analysis of genres. 

As I've said before, writing is a performing art, an insight given me by the first professional writer to take me under her wing and pound some sense into me -- Alma Hill. I've discussed that here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/08/wrting-as-artform-performing-art.html

So what does it mean to "perform" a plot "well?"

Beats.

Rhythm, just like dancing, playing an instrument, acting onstage. 

The Beat is what gives a piece the exact pacing that reader/viewers expect.

You know how it throws you off if your dance partner, Yoga or Martial Arts partner, or sex partner, misses a "beat." Fun turns into not-fun, and it's all in expectations of the actions of another.

In storytelling, the writer is the dance-partner of the reader/viewer.  That's why writers who just want to do their Art their own way fail in the marketplace - because they're dancing solo with a partner who wants carnal contact. 

Why is Romance Genre so emphatically disqualified from the super-huge audiences commanded by blockbuster films like Toy Story 3?

Beats.

Pacing is the very important element that puts off the wider audiences and they don't even know it.

We've examined how "outsiders" explain their aversion to Romance Genre here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/06/why-do-they-despise-romance.html

and here

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/06/is-there-taboo-against-romance-in.html

That's what trained professional writers see (and what widely read readers feel) is "wrong" with Romance.

But I submit that the real problem is the PACING - the exact points at which the plot moves forward a notch and the exact direction in which it must move to satisfy reader/viewers used to productions aimed at the very wide audience.

In graphic Art, trainees spend years and years studying and perfecting the ability to perceive and execute what is called "Line" - an element of composition that is the connecting point between the interior artistic content the artist wants to convey and the viewer of the work who may know nothing of art.  "Line" guides the eye and commands the attention.  "Line" says it all.  (watch Olympic Figure Skating). 

"Line" is what causes you to gasp when you first see an object, pierced by it's beauty.

"Line" is what makes you remember a company logo, and it's why companies pay millions to artists to create such memorable logos.

"Line" is what blockbuster movie fans look for and respond to when they think they're actually focused on something else.

The Romance Genre, packed into a side-channel of paper publishing for so long, has developed its own "Line" and its own "Beat Sheet."

And those elements, as original and enjoyable as they are, clash horribly with what the general audiences expect.

Not, mind you, with what general audiences WANT -- but with what they EXPECT.

Having expectations dashed is painful, not entertaining.

If Romance Genre can take its distilled essence (Love Conquers All; Falling In Love clarifies reality rather than obscuring it) and re-cast that essence into the Beat Sheet and Line that larger audiences expect, it will not only be accepted, it will be more popular than anything else ever has been.

Now that seems to have nothing to do with Toy Story 3.

Well, folks, "Romance Genre" is our "Toys."

People are expected to "grow out of" reading Romance.

Read the analysis on blakesnyder.com (and maybe some of the comments, too) and you'll see the analogy holds better than you would expect.
http://www.blakesnyder.com/2010/06/25/toy-story-3-beat-sheet/

Just like the Toys, the Romance Genre clings to us, reaches for other readers, fights being discarded.

The "Debate" section describes where we are now in this Romance Story.

New "adult" motifs are injected to hold older attention. But just as with SF/F, the Romance readership cycles generation to generation -- just as with Toys. A new generation is reading Romance, a generation raised on visual media.

Also note how the blogger at blakesnyder.com keeps harping on how THEME carries Toy Story 3 to the wider audience. It's about toys - so it's for kids, right? But THEME is the most fun an adult can have with a story. So it hits both audiences.

Romance, like SF/F and all genres these days, has to change "Line" and "Beat" to sustain a "reach" into a readership broad enough to keep publishing profitable.

The world is changing. Novels have to become visual, structured like movies. Don't forget the as yet unrealized field of novels with text and video co-mingled. Only technology keeps that from Kindle distribution.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

7 Pursuits To Teach Yourself Writing Part II

This is Part II, continued from Tuesday April 20.

3) What Is Your Favorite Story

Of all the stories you have floating around inside you, which one(s) are your real favorites?

Which universe have you created that you really live in, while just visiting our shared reality occasionally?

Which character pops up leading your stories most often?

Oh, yes, you have dozens, right?

Probably not. Probably, if you are like most writers, for long stretches of your life you will actually write only one story, about one character, with one problem.

Those Literary Criticism writers I discussed above actually do produce some useful information as they compare works from a given writer over a lifetime.

One thing that turns up among many prolific writers is very similar to what movie critics find about Lead Actors -- there is a single character or "type" and a single story-theme that the writer or actor does with exceptional audience "reach" (breadth of appeal).

And as I have said that I learned from my first writing teacher, Alma Hill, Writing Is A Performing Art.

Writing and Acting are really the same profession.

The skills of one apply to the other.

Very likely, your favorite story will be the story you can craft with the broadest possible "reach."

In Hollywood marketing, "reach" is the measure of how many different demographics will pay to see a work. Does it appeal to 15 year old boys AND 30 year old women, AND 25 year old men and women, and Parents taking their kids, AND 20 year olds taking a date? Can you get them all into the theater? Then you have "reach."

Or you might be in a "niche" market, and not have a very broad reach but really, really REALLY hit that single demographic, 15 year old boys who will drag their date into the theater whether she likes it or not.

And woe betide her if she says she doesn't.

If you read enough biographies, you'll find a lot of very popular writers have been shocked and surprised by the explosion in popularity of a particular thing they've written. Some can duplicate that success, and some can't. I think mostly those who can't are those who have written something very well indeed, but it isn't a favorite inner story of their own.

Why are we talking about this? Because one pursuit you can't stray from is the pursuit of the right mentor for you at this particular time in your development.

That mentor will be someone who is currently selling your favorite character in your favorite story.

If you pursued the study of archetypes, you will be able to see why you resonate to that author's work. Your story, inside of you, is somehow also the same as this author's. But the similarity will be on the highest abstract level, and the differences will mask that similarity in every way possible.

It's the differences that you have to sell. That's your stock in trade.

But what makes your stuff sell is the "vehicle" - the archetype behind it all.

Well mastered craftsmanship lets you showcase the differences and hide the similarities. And that's what gives you penetrating power into an existing market.

If you can't find books on writing by a writer whose work tells you that you belong in his orchestra, in his classroom, among his peers, playing his song, then you must learn by studying how and why you respond to his stories.

A "pantser" learns best by studying what others have externalized. A plotter learns best by studying what's inside themselves. I do both.


4) What Is Your Natural Trope?

One of the pursuits of a writer who wants to reach a broad and deep market, to extract money out of her audience, is the formal education in "literature."

Since the printing press is much older than the moving-picture, there's a lot more written about story-craft in reference to text-based stories than about films.

A film, though, is a story. It's a story in pictures. It's images and iconography, and in many ways far more powerful than the written word. But in other ways, pictures are less powerful than the written word.

But if you have studied the Shamanistic story telling, the Bardic tale, the living oral traditions that led to the Ancient Greek theater, to Rome, to Shakespeare, etc., you surely have noted that the genres created in each medium bear a haunting similarity to each other.

The Adventure, The War Story, The Costume Drama, The Coming Of Age Tale, The Hero's Journey.

Each prototype is adaptable to each medium we've invented so far.

Now, it seems 3-D is the next big thing, but it's so expensive that only the simplest, most visual stories (AVATAR) can be distributed in that medium.

So for the next few decades, I would suggest new writers perfect ways of crating their stories to blend both text and images. In time, distribution costs may come down to where a select few "classics" written for future media will reach future generations.

So, search the inventory of stories floating around in your mind, then learn the popular tropes, the genres, the rule-bound formulaic stories, and study how old genres evolve into new genres.

Consider the "Dime Novel Western," Hard Boiled Detective novel, the Bodice Ripper, the Gothic Romance, the Kickass Heroine SF-Romance, the time-travel Romance, the adventure, the soap opera, the sourcerer's apprentice and all the ever morphing forms.

Then contrast-compare those extant forms with the classic, eternal "storytelling" tropes.

Learn the forms that make classics, then search through the stories inside you and find out what you have in those forms.

Now, it may happen that almost all the stories inside you are of one or another classic form. That could make life easy because you already have inventory to sell. Or it could make life hard because you don't know which one to work up into selling form or where to market it.

But more likely, you will find your own stories are the same as the extant forms you imbibe a lot of. Your favorite entertainment shapes your inner dialogue, but you also gravitate to the extant form that most resonates with your own personal story.

I've discussed how and why this matching happens in several posts on Astrology Just For Writers, with a list of links to them here:

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

And in a discussion of Blake Snyder's SAVE THE CAT! series on screenwriting, is a discussion of what you can achieve with the knowledge of how your internal stories match (or don't) with the tropes that are most popular now, and classically.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/04/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me.html

If it happens that your internal stories just don't match any of the commercial genres, then you have at least three possibilities.

a) You can found a genre with a blockbuster they'll name the genre after.

b) You can whittle, craft, rearrange, develope, unfold, and morph your internal dialogue to match one of the currently extant genres.

c) You can develope a whole new internal dialogue.

Or you can do all of the above. None of this is a betrayal of your personal artistic nature or the gift you bring to the world. It's just mastering a craft, no more complex than learning to talk at age 2.

Storycraft is a language you can acquire as a native speaker -- without knowing grammar, spelling or punctuation. Or it's a language you can learn as an adult, a second language meticulously learned through grammar, vocabulary drill,and ennuciation.

If you speak story as a native, you become a pantser whose stories sell because your internal stories are already in the language everyone else speaks.

If you learn it as an adult, you become a plotter who tells only part of their internal story - the part that can be translated.

So when you've sifted the seething mass of stories inside you down to a set of those that match the external market.

So discovering your natural trope is the 4th pursuit in teaching yourself to write. If your natural trope isn't popular right now, that's a problem to solve by taking up the 5th pursuit, the study of your natural audience.

5) Who Is In Your Natural Audience?

You might think of this pursuit as "Where did everybody go?"

Or perhaps, when everyone is stampeding in the opposite direction from where you're going, you might ask, "What do they know that I don't know?"

As I noted above, actors and writers are really doing the same thing, and so spend a lot of time people watching, especially stampeding herds of people (i.e. trends in reading tastes).

Studying your audience, finding out what amuses them, what they laugh at, what they think about, what they worry about, is very likely the biggest life-long pursuit of a writer.

The commercial fiction writing craft is all about audience "reach" -- how broad an audience can you entertain? How little do they have to have in common with one another to enjoy your product?

But you don't have to be a commercial fiction writer to slice out a demographic of your own and entertain them fully and deeply.

Today, you have self-publishing options, and ebook publishers who are developing famous imprints in very narrow niche audiences.

Today you have many more choices for what to do with your internal story dialogue than ever before.

Find your natural audience, then ask yourself if you want to do what it takes to reach beyond that natural audience.

Very often, that might mean reducing the emotional impact on your natural audience in order to stir and fascinate a broader audience.

Once you've made that decision, you can choose a medium of delivery.

Today, there is a thriving independent film market beginning to develop niche audiences.

In any delivery medium, though, reaching your audience is all about cost, investment, up-front expense.

Part of your expenses as a writer include your education (not tax deductible yet), and the time spent on your day-job.

Who you want to write for, and what mechanism you want to use to reach that audience will shape and empower the fiction you produce.

For example, there was a time you couldn't write a sex scene in a YA novel. That world has changed. But the rules for YA sex and general audience sex scenes, and "Adult" sex scenes are still different.

So you will find yourself re-evaluating what audience you want to write for, and what medium to write in, for each individual work you tackle. Thus studying your natural audience, and audiences around the fringes of your natural audience will become a lifelong pursuit, not a single career decision graven in stone.

When you write a story, you are just like the oldest of old time storytellers. You are standing up before an audience, and what you say, how you say it, when you pause, and when you shout, all depends on how well you know the people behind the faces looking up at you from across the campfire.

Writers are just like actors, singers or dancers. It's the same craft performed in different media.

Writing is a performing art. To master it, you must perform.

And that doesn't mean just write a 1,000 words a day.

The story is not told until someone hears it.

The story is not written until someone reads it.

How well you can get your story to "go over" with your natural audience depends on practice - incessant practice.

But how well you can reach beyond your natural audience also depends on practice. A lot of that practice is practice at getting rejection slips and figuring out what to do about any comments on them.

Learning to reach beyond your natural audience, to reach enough people to justify book publication expenses, to justify a stage production or film production, takes persistent practice.

The more expensive the medium of production, the farther beyond your natural audience you must "reach." And so the more practice it takes.

Finding your natural audience is the first step in a long, involved pursuit. Once you identify your natural audience, you must figure out what they have in common with other audience-fragments you might reach with only tiny adjustments in your internal story's tropes.

And you have to do this over and over again for each story you want to tell. So again and again, it becomes a lifelong pursuit in teaching yourself to write.

However, just as telling your story can't happen until there is someone to tell it TO -- likewise, teaching yourself can't be done in total isolation.

6) Who Is Your Natural Mentor?

When you have done all you can do by yourself, when you have produced several works you have polished until you can't see a difference between your work and the other similar works in your genre, then you need a mentor.

Again, a mentor is not a teacher. A mentor is more like a drill instructor, a martial arts sensei, or a dance teacher or orchestra leader.

Before a mentor can help you at all, you must have the basics down pat, but not to the point where you believe you know it all, or where you've practiced your errors to be habits you can't change.

A mentor does something. You copy it. The mentor tells you what you did wrong, kicks your feet into allignment for the posture, drills you in the forms, tells you your note is flat, sets the tempo. You do it again and again and again until you conform your output to standard.

Who will you accept that kind of discipline from? How do you find that person? How will that person recognize you?

In teaching yourself to write, you will adopt many lifelong pursuits. Searching for your mentor -- and your next mentor and the next -- becomes a lifelong pursuit.

A mentor can't teach you. You can use a mentor to teach yourself, but only if you have defined what you must master and what you're willing to suffer through to master it.

The other 5 pursuits listed here help you define what you must master.

Only you can set limits on what you will suffer to achieve mastery.

Generally speaking, searching for a mentor will most likely not prove successful.

Mentors find you.

A potential mentor is someone who has just recently mastered what you now need to master.

People who are ready and willing to "pay it forward" - to pass on what they have internalized to a non-verbal understanding, will not generally go around looking for someone to mentor.

But they will be working in the field, demonstrating their mastery, cutting a swath through all the competition.

In the course of that, they may stumble upon your output, and recognize that the one thing it lacks is this newly mastered technique.

And they will offer a clue, a comment, a crumb, to help you recognize what's missing.

If you respond by accepting that casual input and putting it to use, incorporating it easily and quickly, and producing something ELSE to show them (not saying, "I made these changes. Is it right now?" but creating something new that does demonstrate an attempt at the technique) -- then perhaps you will capture this mentor's attention.

Once captured, you may not be able to shake that attention off so be careful who you respond to.

The flip side of the coin is that once you accept input from a mentor, you then must "pay it forward." You can't fail to offer that crumb to someone else who is lacking it.

Accepting a mentor doesn't cost money. It's much more expensive than that.

"By your students you'll be taught."

When you offer to mentor someone, you have to be vulnerable to what comes back at you because of it.

From that experience, though, will come your next great work.

Ultimately, that's where all our ideas come from -- other people.

Today, you can accept mentoring after a fashion via printed or ebooks on the craft.

But as with living, hands-on mentors, no one single source will inculcate everything you must master.

As I mentioned above, there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of books on screenwriting and on novel writing.

They all pretty much say the same thing, over and over, in different ways, just as living mentors impart their craft in different ways.

Which book is good for you will depend on who you are and where you are in the learning curve at the moment you pick it up.

You can read the same advice 6 times and think you have it -- then read a 7th book and WHAM finally get it.

It all boils down to little sayings all professional writers know -- such as "show don't tell" "conflict, resolution" "characters must arc" -- but exactly how you personally implement these sigils of the craft depends on who you are.

If you go to
http://www.triggerstreet.com/

Sign up, and then look for JLichtenberg, you will find about 19 in depth analyses that I have done of screenplays others have written (some of the screenplays are still available there for free reading - some subsequently rewritten).

Quickly look through the screenplays and what I singled out as the main problem, and you will find that the same thing happens with screenplays as with novels -- over and over, the real and only problem with beginning writers (and seasoned pros, too) is CONFLICT.

Identifying, developing, and resolving a single main conflict, a thread that runs right through the work as the backbone of the work, is the one thing necessary to sell a work, and the last thing writers master.

Really. All these books on writing try to convey ways, means and methods of getting your mind to grapple with a conflict in such a way that a reader/viewer can grasp that conflict and experience its resolution as the personal payoff to sitting through the storytelling.

Every trope and genre has a specific conflict, and a pattern of events that leads to a resolution of that conflict.

All our lives have a main conflict (the story of your life) -- read my posts on Astrology and Tarot for more specifics.

We resonate to fiction that discusses our main life conflict "off the nose" - subconsciously, or by distancing the issue.

It's CONFLICT that connects your internal stories to your audience's internal stories.

Showing rather than telling CONFLICT is the main technique all books on writing try to mentor new writers into realizing in their drama.

Here are some books that do a fine job of it - books recommended by Rowena Cherry. In my opinion, you would do just fine picking a book off the library shelves or out of the discard bin at a used book store.

7)Books others use or recommend.

Three suggestions from Rowena Cherry - the writer who started this co-blog:
-------
Laughing at myself. Some would say that I did not do a very good job of teaching myself to write... so my list might not be a good recommendation.
Ronald B Tobias's "20 Master Plots" is always close at hand when I draft a new book, but I tend to take two of his master plots at a time, and mix them, one for the hero, the other for the heroine.

"I rely heavily on "The Joy Of Writing Sex" by Elizabeth Benedict (I think), because I don't naturally enjoy writing about sex."

"Al Zuckerman's "Writing The Blockbuster Novel" has some excellent recommendations of blockbusters to read (Thorn birds, The Godfather, Gone With The Wind..." However, I have yet to write a blockbuster, so either the advice left too much to extrapolation, or I am a lousy student.

Probably the latter!"

"Orson Scott Card's "Characterization" book is excellent, but if you read "How To Write Science Fiction and Fantasy" you find the same great advice, pretty much."
--------

I would agree with all three of those.

Pray hard, close your eyes, pick a book, start reading in the middle of the book. You'll find the mentoring advice you need to get started on this pursuit.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

7 Pursuits To Teach Yourself Writing Part I

My posts are always too long, so this time I'll try an experiment. I'm going to post this one in 2 parts, Part I and Part II, posted a week apart, even though it's a single long piece. How many of you who want to read Part II will forget to?

http://www.amazon.com/review/RSRPV96SU9D4W/ref=cm_cr_rev_detmd_pl?ie=UTF8&cdMsgNo=3&cdPage=1&store=books&cdSort=oldest&cdMsgID=Mx1S6NK71GGPZ5F#Mx1S6NK71GGPZ5F

Is a comment on a review I wrote of SAVE THE CAT!

The review I wrote has drawn 3 marvelous compliments from readers (and from Blake Snyder when he first published the book). This third comment though asks for a list of (currently available) books on screenwriting that would teach what you need to know before SAVE THE CAT!

Any list I could give you would probably be useless in a year or so because many of the titles would be out of print unless they were e-books. And even then, they would likely be out of date in some way because the entire field of "commercial entertainment" is always morphing. I will put a list though at the end of Part II.

And the truth is, though I've read countless books "on screenwriting" (started in grammar school and High School too, reading every book on playwriting the library would stock - inter-library loan books too) I've never read a screenwriting craft book that actually taught how to write a STORY.

Writing a script (stage play or screenplay) is a secondary skill.

You've seen any number of screenplays "based on a story by" -- screenplays have to be based on a story! Before you can write the screenplay, you must craft the story itself or find one already crafted.

Creating that story is actually a separate craft from screenwriting, and it is best learned by studying books on novel craft.

Yet a novel is structured differently than a play.

You have to learn that difference in order to write a story that would be useful to a screenwriter, yourself or someone else.

There is a way to teach yourself that difference and how to leverage that difference into a blockbuster screenplay based on a story by you.

So I'm going to give some examples of where to look, and how to identify a writing textbook that can help you -- but with a focus on what to do with those texts and how to do it.

The reason there are so many books on screenwriting is twofold.

a) there is no "one thing" to master and then you can do it. No two writers are alike, no two people master any performing art the same way, or in the same order. The ones who will sell scripts generally go this route, selecting a few courses, reading a lot of books because multitudes of approaches are needed.

b) there are multitudes of people who want to "become" screenwriters and will read books to dream about it, but will likely never finish any script. They keep buying books and paying for courses so the field grows. The ones who will sell scripts generally don't do it via this route, taking lots and lots of courses and buying lots and lots of books.

How do you teach yourself writing craft for storytelling in any medium?

Story craft is a huge subject. To master it, you must understand that the subject is bigger than you are.

Marion Zimmer Bradley had a 3X5 card tacked over her desk saying nobody ever told you not to be a plumber.

There are more efficient ways of making a living. Writing is the hardest work and the most underpaid except maybe ballet dancing.

Except for the top 1 to 5% of writers, the best paid working writers make less than minimum wage if you add up all the hours spent at it over a lifetime.

Writing is a vocation not an occupation.

It's a Calling.

You must dedicate your whole life to it and be willing to sacrifice everything else (sometimes your sacrifice isn't accepted and your family will miraculously stick by you no matter how you neglect them; but you must be willing, often savagely willing).

Read a lot of biographies. You'll see every really famous writer's biography includes a myriad occupations, all apparently disconnected. The career of writing is composed of odd jobs and a life of study.

So I'm going to list some of the pursuits that might lead through that myriad occupations to a career in writing. And from all this you may discover how to find the books on writing craft and screenwriting craft that will synthesize these pursuits into a sellable screenplay or novel (or both).

1) What is storytelling?

The first pursuit is to define what you are pursuing.

There is a craft called "storytelling" which is a theatrical discipline, and a folk-art.

Storytelling specifically refers to a person who stands up before a live audience and creates with words and dramatic delivery a story usually with a moral or lesson. It is perhaps the most ancient form, and most respected. The original objective may have been cultural continuity, bringing the young into the community.

It isn't exactly what I'm referring to as "storytelling," but all of its craft disciplines are very specifically relevant to learning to teach yourself the craft of commercial fiction writing for text or dramatization.

The most important lesson you can learn from storytellers is audience awareness.

A person who simply mouths off about their own internal fantasies is not story-telling. The "telling" part involves connecting emotionally to the audience and that means being aware of the audience's main fantasies. More about that later.

So the first "pursuit" on our list is to study storytelling from shamanistic origins through Broadway stageplay, even perhaps including folk music performances and today's popular rap forms until you understand exactly what you are aiming to master.

Storytelling is the core origin of "entertainment" - the kissing cousin of the Bardic Craft (traveling living newspaper and history book all wrapped in poetry and a rousing well lubricated singalong).

And all of these living person delivery systems are bundled up today in the "Classroom Teacher" from Kindergarten through 16th Grade. The school librarian or public children's librarian is another manifestation of this. Some even play guitar and sing to the tots!

These teachers are usually our first contact with live entertainment, the first ignition of the desire to share our fantasies, our inner lives, with others.

Teaching is entertainment at its best.

So to teach yourself, you must entertain yourself.

Learning is something else altogether.

I have held elsewhere that there is no such thing as "teaching" -- that one person can not convey either information or a world-view by force into an unwilling or disinterested mind. Even indoctrination doesn't work very well without an entertainment aspect.

But there is "learning" -- and "learning together" as a group activity.

As in "The King And I" -- "by your students you'll be taught" -- if you don't open yourself to absorbing lore from your students, they can not and will not absorb anything from you. So be careful who you set out to teach.

The English words "teaching" and "learning" imply one-sided activity, each disconnected from the other, each able to exist in isolation.

This is a property of the English language, a way of dividing the world into compartments that is distinct from the way languages from other Language Families divide the world.

The formal study of Linguistics, especially neurolinguistic programming, is highly recommended as a pursuit under this first category of pursuits. If you are to use language to tell a story, you might be more successful if you know how language works and why it works that way.

Screenplays are "a story in pictures" - and pictures are also language. See my blog entry on the new iconography:

TURNING ACTION INTO ROMANCE
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/04/turning-action-into-romance.html

It's about a new Iconography of the modern action-romance, images reveal theme: TOUCHED BY AN ALIEN DAW Books Cover image vs. a still from the movie FACE OFF. 
So if the concepts teaching and learning are actually just artifacts of the English language, what really does happen in a classroom or when you read a book about how to do something? How are skills transmitted in real life?

A real life transmission situation is better described in terms of music and resonance.

A classroom is more like an orchestra than it is like a mother bird feeding chicks.

I think those who participated in Blake Snyder's screenwriting workshops got that impression of playing in an orchestra he was directing. And orchestral directing is, like writing, a performing art.

In the transmission of an artform from generation to generation, the vast majority of what is transmitted is non-verbal, even sometimes spiritual. And that's true of a verbal artform, so transmission is best done in person.

My own hands-on, in person, orchestra leader was Marion Zimmer Bradley.

No two writers could possibly be more opposite in nature and function than Marion Zimmer Bradley and Jacqueline Lichtenberg, but I absorbed things from her that can not be put into words.

I was recently reminded of all she ignited within me by a query that came to me on twitter after a #scifichat,

(for how to participate in twitter online chats see
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/02/strange-benefit-of-social-networking.html )

@All_Day_SCIfi asked me if I knew of any good books on literary analysis.

Since High School, I've had many encounters with "literary criticism" and none have been informative or useful - perhaps because I'm an originator of the "literary" that others "criticise."

The query did say "analysis" which is what I do to stories, but not just to "literary" stories -- I devour stories delivered in any medium and analyze what makes them work, or not work, and what I would choose to do to the story to make it work or work better.

Many years ago, I was a Guest at The Conference On The Fantastic that Margaret Carter reported on this year:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/international-conference-on-fantastic_25.html

I attended several memorable panels, talks and paper readings at that event, met Stephen King, and had other remarkable experiences all in the space of a few days.

One of them was a paper on Marion Zimmer Bradley - of course I couldn't miss hearing that so I was one of the first to arrive, and got a front seat and listened with absolute attention.

At that time, the Conference was new, and Professors didn't write papers on mass market original novels, nevermind SF or Fantasy. The Conference on the Fantastic has changed my world in that regard.

This particular paper drew some very deep and searching conclusions about Marion, her work, her worldbuilding, and the substance of the themes she was working with. Almost all the conclusions and assumptions in the paper were based on the final paragraph of one Darkover novel.

As it happened, I knew something the writer of the paper did not know, and according to the rules of literary criticism was forbidden to research and discover. What I knew, invalidated everything in the paper resoundingly.

I knew that the final few lines of that novel were not written by Marion, but by an editor. I knew because I'd seen the original and Marion told me how the ending got changed, not because she was incensed about it but because she was illustrating a point about how to work with themes, how to craft a beginning and an ending that match (just as in a symphony -- she was a student of opera, another pursuit I'd recommend).

The change in wording of the final sentence changed the theme drastically. It changed it to a theme she personally did not want her byline associated with but which the editor thought would sell better, and which the editor thought was what she really meant anyway.

She discussed it with me also to illustrate what it means to be a professional fiction writer working in the mass market paperback medium, as opposed to hardcover original where writers have more authority.

It was, at that time, very common for a mass market paperback editor to change a writer's words (legally, it was in the contracts that they could do so) without the writer's knowledge or consent and then print the book. Even when that wasn't in the contract, it was career death to object publically.

The reason for this is simply deadlines. Mass Market moves production faster and on a lower budget with less time and fewer people, and little or no cross-checking at every step. That makes it oddly like film production where, though there is much checking and changing, the writer is simply out of the loop after delivering the script. The pace is frantic for time is money, and decisions are made not on the basis of the art but on the basis of cost.

Objecting to such routine practices in production is the difference between an "artist" and a "commercial fiction writer."

An artist's work depends on every punctuation point and even misspelling - every paragraphing choice and every word choice. Nothing can be changed without destroying the artistic effect.

A commercial fiction writer buries the important stuff, the art, so deep these commercial changes made by many hands along the production channel don't matter.

In this particular case Marion ran into, the change in the ending mattered a lot -- but Marion settled it privately and never had that happen to her again by that editor.

The professor writing a paper about Marion based on that ending could have discovered the origin of those words by asking Marion (she was still alive then and easily reached).

But that's against professor rules. You can't ask an author what they meant to say, even if the author is still alive, and derive a point of "literary criticism" from what the author says they meant to say. You have to work from the printed text.

My personal opinion of literary criticism and scholarship in general reached an all time low at that point, and has stayed there.

Maybe I should change my opinion now that the Conference on the Fantastic has changed my world. It's possible that analyzing mass market work has caused professors to change their rules of evidence, and that would change my opinion.

But I did learn the lesson Marion was demonstrating. Master the layered construction of a story and learn what "they" will change during production, and what you can sneak past them. But also learn how to react professionally when something turns out differently than you intended.

And that's what "storytelling" really is.

The story you have inside you to tell will stay inside you unless you can master the craft of delivering that story to an audience, and Marion's experience with having her ending changed demonstrates what the writer goes through to deliver a story to an audience.

StoryTELLING - delivering - is a mechanical craft that anyone can learn.

But I've never seen anything like this lesson written down in books on writing, or screenwriting.

Many books on screenwriting are only annecdotes about personal experiences and cheerleading to inspire dreams of success. One book like that, more storytelling than instruction, is WRITING THE KILLER TREATMENT (selling your story without a script) by Michael Halperin.

From the title, you'd think it was about how to extract the working parts of your story into an outline that a skilled screenwriter could use to craft a completed script "based on a story by."

But no. It doesn't tell you how to do it. It tells you that you must do it and how much fun and profit there is when you do. It's a $15 book I found to be a total waste of time and money - not because it's a badly written book. No, it's a very entertaining, lively, and zestful bit of inspirational writing. It's the title that's misleading (to me). Others might construe it to mean something more like what's actually inside the book.

Marion's lesson to me in telling me about how the last lines of a novel got changed without her having a chance to object or negotiate was tossed at me in response to something I had said or done -- and in the context of my learning curve, because the lesson was chosen and tailored for me at that time, I learned a thousand things from it.

If you pick up WRITING THE KILLER TREATMENT at the right point in your learning curve, you may learn a thousand lessons and sell screenplay because of it.

A good book on writing craft is one you are ready for.

A bad book on writing craft is one you are beyond - or one you aren't ready for.

If you run into a "bad book" on writing craft, put it on your shelf. There may come a day you need it -- or a day you will refer a student to it because it's just what they need at that point in their learning curve.

Marion also said many times, anyone who can write a literate English sentence can write and sell fiction.

You can teach yourself. You don't need to pay thousands of dollars for classes, or hundreds of dollars for books on writing (libraries are full of craft books for free reading and the internet is replete with hints, tips, and blogs like this one, even online courses that aren't very expensive.)

So where do you start teaching yourself?

Well, once you are well launched on pursuit #1, "What is Storytelling?" you are ready to ask yourself a group of questions that will launch you into more pursuits, some of which may turn into occupations.

Question-asking is the major technique of the storyteller, and I don't just mean the Socratic Method.

The answer to any question lies in the formulation of the question. Get the formulation wrong, and you will never find the answer.

The best place I know of to learn questioning is in the pursuit of an education in the sciences.

Philosophy is another subject area, especially religious philosophy, that trains the mind in questioning.

See my blog entry on Theodore Sturgeon's motto, Ask The Next Question for more on that:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/theodore-sturgeon-ask-next-question.html

So "What is Storytelling?" naturally leads me to ask:

2) What Stories Are You Telling Yourself?

I know of 3 kinds of writers: Deliberate Plotters, Pantsers, and Hybrids.

Deliberate plotters need to know consciously, exactly what they're doing, why and how all laid out in an outline before they do it. They make great formula mystery writers.

Pantsers (the majority, I think) write "by the seat of their pants" -- just make it up as they go along, do what the characters dictate, follow the character's nose through the story. Marion was that kind of writer; completely subconscious.

Hybrids, like me, do it both ways at once, and vacilate back and forth without rhyme or reason. But I've trained myself to be more of a plotter, and Marion often said how she admired my ability to plot.

But what is it that you are doing when you write a story? Is it just plotting?

Most writers (commercial and otherwise) have thousands of stories bursting inside their heads, dream bits in different universes every night, and have a hard time choosing one story to write and finish.

In fact, that's one way to tell if a young child is going to "be a writer."

Marion often said, perhaps quoting Robert A. Heinlein, the only reason to be a writer is that you can't do anything else.

Writers write. And if they can't write, they stare at a blank wall and tell themselves stories. Incessantly.

It is the nature of a writer to glance at a cereal package and leap off into a whole story.

Writers, like actors, sit on shopping mall benches and people-watch, guessing what soap opera each passer-by is wound up in.

Writers don't strain for story ideas. They don't hunt for them. They don't go somewhere else to "get an idea." They have to beat the ideas off with a stick.

For commercial fiction writers, that stick is made of the filter question, "Can I Sell This Story?" "What's the market for this story?"

For the screenwriter, the filter is not about the story at all -- nor even about the idea. The screenwriter searches for "High Concept" which is a wholly different animal than a novelist tames.

Here is one place I discussed the High Concept in screenwriting:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/medium-is-message_19.html

And here I discuss how concept distinguishes a novel from a screenplay

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2006/11/converting-novel-to-screenplay.html

So before you can choose a filter, you have to know which kind of story your mind keeps generating. You have to inventory, contrast, compare, examine, slice and dice, what's floating around inside your mind.

Unless, of course, you're a "pantser" by nature, and looking too closely at the content of your internal stories would be like asking a centipede how it walks.

In that case, you need to focus more externally and examine closely what you do for relaxation, for entertainment. What do you do when you're doing nothing? What carrot do you put on a stick and chase through your daily chores so you can get it for a reward?

Is it a TV show, a movie, a book, all of the above multi-tasked?

Since you are selling FUN, you need to have some in stock to sell. Go have some fun. Acquire that fun, intellectually, emotionally, and/or non-verbally. Repackage it and sell it.

The pursuit of the contents of your internal stories will, most likely, lead you to the pursuit of the study of archetypes, of  THE HERO'S JOURNEY and similar insightful works.

Psychology, socialogy, and every kind of -ology listed in any university catalogue can be applied to sorting, categorizing, and warehousing your inventory of internal stories.

One or another of those thousands will have commercial potential.

Why? Because one or another of your stories actually also resides within thousands and thousands of other people.

Those stories that reside in thousands, millions, or everyone are either based in archetypes or they are pure archetypes.

That's why so very often we hear the cries of, "They Stole My Idea!"

They didn't steal it, they got it the same place you did -- "up there somewhere."

I've done twenty posts on Tarot Minor Arcana which discuss slicing and dicing archetypes and how a writer can employ these principles in the process of writing. The posts are listed in these posts:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me.html lists Suit of Swords

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_23.html lists Suit of Pentacles

All of this came out of my own examination of my internal stories.

My external stories, what's been professionally published, are very different - but not unrecognizable.

See next week, Tuesday, on this blog for part II.

This is short, right?  *sigh*

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Conversation on Twitter

If you've been following my entries on the blog, you know I'm examining the rising phenomenon of "social networking" as part of the way "publishing" is changing under the impact of the Web and e-book. Those changes are re-shaping Genre, and allowing for the explosion of Cross Genre novels, mixed Genre novels, and mashed universes where characters by one author meet characters from another author's series.

Here is a scattered sample of some of my posts here on social networking.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/11/i-love-web-20.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/new-cb-radio-come-on-back.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/writing-tips-tweets.html

and the attempt by "marketers" to use the social networks to promote their products, many of them bewildered why it doesn't "work."

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/marketing-via-social-networking.html

Twitter has rapidly become one of my favorite social networks because I keep discovering people, and finding links to things I want to know about but had no clue that I was interested in (and thus would not have googled for the subject).

Here is a conversational exchange with a person I follow, who follows me so that I can hear what they're saying and they can hear what I'm saying.

scripteach I greatly enjoyed #TheHurtLocker, but thought the direction rocked, not the script. It felt like it drifted off the rails in 3rd Act.

jlichtenberg @scripteach "It felt like it drifted off the rails" doesn't help a writer learn not to drift off their own rails Say why and how to fix pls

scripteach @jlichtenberg doesn't help a writer learn not to drift off their own rails Say why & how to fix pls In less than 140 characters is hard!

scripteach @JLichtenberg I'll try to blog about #TheHurtLocker soon. For now, the protag's unauthorized mission into city & return home felt false.

jlichtenberg @scripteach Good point about "unauthorized mission" motivation failing. How do you spot that in your own work? #scriptchat

scripteach RT @JLichtenberg: How do you spot in your own work? #scriptchat Beware of what YOU want protag to do v. what the character should want to do

jlichtenberg @scripteach Ur nutshell " #scriptchat Beware of what YOU want protag to do v. what the character should want to do" ROCKS!!! @susansizemore

I flagged Susan Sizemore on that because she and I exchanged tweets about staying with POV character. She tweeted that she'd made herself a problem by following too many minor characters, and that made me think (but not tweet) the complex relationship between following minor character's pov and using minor characters to reveal major character's motivations.

And @scripteach was talking really about a MOTIVATION problem in this very prominent film.

The #scriptchat hashtag can be searched on to produce all the tweets by everyone on twitter who inserts #scriptchat into a tweet -- regardless of whether you're following them or not.

People (ppl) discussing The Hurt Locker use the hashtag #TheHurtLocker and see each other's posts.

Anyone searching on a hashtag may (not will; may) see your tweet if you include that tag.

And they may, not will, follow you to see what else you say.

Having conversational exchanges like this is one the most rewarding and instructive functions of social networking.

Now of course I should write one of my humongous posts on what @scripteach has said and what it means and how you can use it.

For the time being, though, memorize and think about

"Beware of what YOU want protag to do v. what the character should want to do"

I'm not good at nutshells. It would probably take me 2500 words to sketch a means of employing that bit of wisdom.

If you want to research it - check out the writing error technically termed "contrived."

-------
I also found via twitter that the SHOOTING SCRIPT of this film has been released in print with additional pages of illustrations etc. at 160 pages --
----------
FROM AMAZON:
In addition to the complete shooting script, this Newmarket Shooting Script® Book includes an exclusive introduction by Kathyrn Bigelow, a 16-page color photo section, production notes, storyboards, and complete cast and crew credits.
-----------

And here's more about it on Amazon:
The Hurt Locker: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Shooting Script)

This is indeed a strange new world where to get a story out printed on paper it must first become a major motion picture winning awards right and left.

The alternative is to become a TV commentator.

I ReTweeted (RT) the tweet that alerted me to The Hurt Locker as a script on paper and flagged @scripteach thusly:

jlichtenberg RT @MattDentler: Some thoughts on THE HURT LOCKER screenplay (and the party last night celebrating it): http://bit.ly/baTR84 @scripteach

And @scripteach answered that he would read the script thusly:

scripteach RT @JLichtenberg: RT @MattDentler: Some thoughts on THE HURT LOCKER screenplay): http://bit.ly/baTR84 I'll read script & see what I think

That's why it's called "social networking" -- and that's why marketers can't afford to do it. At no time did the publisher of the shooting script participate in this exchange. I don't even know if they're on twitter. I didn't go out to sell a copy of the script. I was just curious how a screenwriting teacher would explain a script's hole to writing students on #scriptchat so I asked, and got a great answer, and picked up on someone else mentioning a blog about the film's success which has on it a link to the shooting script published as a book on paper.

That's a "net" and it got "worked."  

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com