Linguistics For Writers

Those who haven't read past posts on this blog should take a look at the post and comments by Rowena Cherry
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/11/problem-solving-sundays-future-of-chain.html

And the other post she put up on Sunday Nov 23rd and its comments.

All this is about the publishing industry's disarray, especially in Oct. 2008, due to the economy -- and as I noted, the even more destructive wave of events yet to happen to publishing due to the freezing in the credit markets.

Worldbuilders note: there is a vast distinction between "the economy" and "the financial system" -- a distinction many people don't make because they are linked. Our economy is still in fine shape (healthy economies hold recessions periodically) but it is vulnerable to the heart-attack stoppage in the financial system which is in horrid shape. No industry, not even autos, is as vulnerable as publishing to an interruption in financial flows.

Publishing (on paper) is undergoing a crisis at least as great as that of the US auto industry, maybe more jarring than that of the credit markets, at a moment of fragility perhaps more critical than ever for the storytellers of the world.

The Fiction Delivery System and the Fact-Delivery-System are in melt-down and re-organization. There is still a market for fiction and fact -- some opportunistic businessman will see a way to serve that market at a profit. Meanwhile, grocery clerking is probably better paying than writing.

As I noted in my comments, this is the greatest opportunity for new writers, and seasoned professionals, to swarm forward with solutions that will elevate the prestige level of genre fiction in general, but most especially of the multi-faceted Romance genre.

So now is the time to aggressively train to write fast, to write with precision, to create worlds in profusion but with verisimilitude that will shock every reader into memorizing your byline. Now is the time to learn and to do.

So my post this week is reaching far out into the very foundations of story idea generation, into the very source of ideas -- worldbuilding. "What if...? If Only ...? If This Goes On ...?" At what level would a change in our real world produce a world so different, it would be incomprehensible and thus interesting to readers living in an incomprehensible world?

Comprehension is facilitated by language, and language forms the foundation of our own subjective world, and thus of all our fictional worlds.

Slip into the skin of your alien character who lives with magical perceptions of reality, or to whom the plasma surface of a sun is a pleasant atmosphere. Now feel what it's like for him or her to converse with others of their kind in front of a mundane human of Earth. The language your character needs to use is rooted in his/her perceptual reality -- and that language would have words for things no Earth language has words for. A teleport would have syntax no Earth language would have for position.

You wouldn't think that the dry, objective, confusing field of Linguistics would be a prime source of unique, new ideas for Romance novels - or would you?

It is definitely the primary field to study if you want to write about an Alien From Outer Space -- or an Elf From Cross-Space.

I want to toss you an idea that came to me as I was trying to figure out how to explain another idea that follows from my post of Tuesday November 18 on GIFT: GIVER: RECIPIENT

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/11/gift-giver-recipient.html

I was going to use the analogy of phoneme, which I assume everyone reading this blog understands. I have long been familiar with the way the human brain, ear, and tongue combine to narrow the possibilities of all the sounds a human can make into those that have "meaning" in the linguistic sense not the animal sense, and those that don't carry meaning.

As a result, if you learn a language or dialect at an age above 3 years -- or 7 years in some cases -- you will always have an accent that is detectable if not by native speakers then by machine reading the speech sounds you make.

EXAMPLE: some oriental languages don't have the r sound, so learners of English substitute the l sound and can't hear the difference.

EXAMPLE: Mary, Marry, Merry sound the same in some English dialects. Likewise Pen and Pan and Pin sound the same in some English dialects.

Unless you are strongly talented in languages - or have learned many languages "natively" at age 2-4 so you have the whole phoneme set that humans can make, you can never learn to hear and produce those kinds of differences reliably. Think about the clicks used by various African languages. Think about the difference between Aleph and Ayin in Hebrew (two glottal stops, one higher in the throat than the other) -- it was preserved in the Sephardic phonemes but not the Ashkenazic. Americans never learn it right.

In my Nov 18, 2008 post,
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/11/gift-giver-recipient.html

I talked about the blank spot in our culture's way of looking at life, the spot which should be filled with the mystique, mechanism, proprieties, privileges, taboos, and magical power of RECEIVING.

We think we know what it means, but for most people it's just a word. That blankness in perceptual space regarding RECEIVING produces a blank spot in the perceptual space occupied by GIVING.

So this morning I was trying to figure out how to explain that. Yes, I know, most readers of this blog don't understand at all what I'm going on about or why -- or what it all has to do with Romance, nevermind Love. Trust me, it's all connected, mystically and practically.

So I'm washing dishes (where a lot of my best ideas occur) and suddenly I know how to convey the concept I have in my mind that has no words for it.

Being an SF writer, I boldly go where no one has gone before -- I invent language.

So I invented a word that would explain everything I have to say in one simple word, and then we can get on with the discussion of what the blank part of our Giving/Receiving paradigm has has to do with writing SF/F Romance.

My word?

Epistememe.

OK, now on with the important part of the discussion.

WAIT!

What if someone else has used this word to mean something different from what I mean by it? Uh-oh. Google quick!

AUSTRALIAN LANGUAGES?????!!!!! (sorry Linnea)

Google-google-google. Aha! Some people called "Language Typologists" have coined this word before me -- in the 1980's it seems, so it is possible I've run across it before and it soaked into my subconscious. But their definition is not the one I need to explain my point about what writers who invent Elves, talking Unicorns, and Vulcans (nevermind Simes) need to understand before the Elf falls in love with the Vulcan.

Here's a pdf file I found on the web and a quote from one of its 58 panels -- I think it's a slide presentation that goes with a lecture.

http://www.fl.ut.ee/orb.aw/class=file/action=preview/id=401744/Tartu08Plenary_Haspelmath.pdf

Here's the quote from slide 41:
-------------------------------------

More comparative concepts (3):
wh-movement
41
• generalization: Wh-movement is always to the left.
• definition: Wh-movement is a syntactic construction in which a
wh-word occurs in a special position in which its non-whcounterpart
would not normally occur.
• definition 2: A wh-word is a word that can be used as a
question pronoun, i.e. to represent the questioned content in a
content question.
• comparative concept vs. descriptive category: In many
languages, wh-words are also used as indefinite pronouns and/or
as relative pronouns. Alternative terms such as epistememe
(Durie 1985) and ignorative (Wierzbicka 1980) have therefore
been proposed. Still, these fall under the above definition.

---------------

Now I didn't go look up Durie's 1985 work -- likely it's not on the web. Someone with a university library access might locate it, but it's probably the same approach as used by Martin Haspelmath in this lecture.

Haspelmath demonstrates the purely linguistic approach -- which is very limiting from the point of view of a writer trying to people a world he/she has built.

Linguists take the whole bunch of languages humans use (or have used if they can crack them) and analyze the bits and pieces of speech. Linguists study language, not communication (though most of them would argue that point vociferously since they talk a lot about sememes in semantics.)

Writers of fiction are wholly focused on COMMUNICATION among our characters. Or we resort to the Universal Translator and forget all the problems.

Haspelmath's academic slide presentation demonstrates one of the reasons that it is impossible to TRANSLATE anything accurately. It gives some examples of the use of prepositions and pronouns across language families and within a language family.

It does not discuss WHY the typology doesn't correspond exactly from one language to another, but the "why" is the interesting thing to a writer building a world.

Psychology, brain development studies, magic or maybe even genes might figure in, though I doubt genes have anything to do with it. I think the diversity among our languages is a reflection of the origin of human COMMUNICATION.

When inventing aliens that human readers will accept, you need to know how the aliens came to be able to communicate with one another, the stepwise origin for them, and what drove that necessity, but you don't necessarily have to know this consciously.

Thus understanding the root origin of language at the philosophical level can allow your subconscious to create in an instant what your conscious mind could never achieve - an alien language with dramatic potential.

We've learned recently that the human brain, even in older folks, can rewire itself, recircuit around stroke damage, restructure the neurons. People who use computers a lot, even if they start when older, show distinctive brain structure changes. (I read that in an article on the web and don't have the reference handy.) If you dig up any of these references, please post them to the comments.

But our Language Centers don't change so easily in adulthood.

Song birds (mocking birds and I think Canaries?) have a few weeks in infancy where they learn their SONG(s), and then they sing that song the rest of their lives. Humans too, have a "song" (i.e. languages) that a part of our brain circuits itself to handle, and then that's IT for life. When you learn languages later in life, the brain handles the knowledge differently.

Teens learn the cant -- or SONG or TUNE or ACCENT -- (the Valley Girl) -- they absorb from those they associate with. There is such a thing as a Harvard Accent, and you can tell those who learned it from their parents from those who just learned it when they arrived on campus.

Human language is BIRD SONG.

Bird song is used much for MATING.

Isn't that interesting?

But humans don't just repeat mating song. We communicate abstract ideas and describe concrete things and events.

What is it that binds a bunch of individuals into a community?

I saw an interesting National Geographic TV feature on Monkeys the other day -- chimps -- social structure. I've seen lots of those over the years -- but I watched a good 15 minutes of this one, enraptured.

The origin of communication among primates. Food, reproduction, survival. Primal basics which Blake Snyder recommends as the driving force behind a plot. He says make it so simple a cave man could understand it.

So I had this idea. What binds a group of individuals is an AGREEMENT on the nature of reality. An epistemology, or a paradigm that explains existence and how to keep on existing.

The important element is the agreement part - social sanction - that which is unquestioned.

Individuals all live in their own subjective realities, bubbles of assumptions. In an unbound group, just about every "epistememe" (my definition) would exist, just as an infant babbles every phoneme the human can make.

In order to bind into a tribe, a co-bonded survival structure, SOME assumptions have to be thrown out, excised, declared not to exist, ignored to death. Membership in the group, and thus survival itself, is rooted in one's absolute rejection of the forbidden, taboo assumptions about reality.

Groups don't bind on what they have in common.

They bind on what they have commonly rejected.

I don't think I've ever seen that idea examined academically, but I think it doesn't have to be true to be useful in building a fictional world.

Though I can't COIN the term "epistememe," I can add a definition, make it a technical term, jargon just for writers whose job under World Building and Plot-Conflict Integration is to imagine the languages of non-humans.

EPISTEMEME IS DEFINED BY JACQUELINE LICHTENBERG AS THE SMALLEST INDIVISIBLE UNIT OF ALL POSSIBLE COMPONENTS OF ALL POSTULATES ABOUT THE ORIGIN, NATURE, AND FUNCTION OF REALITY. The smallest indivisible unit of an epistemology.

The definition of epistememe for writers then is the smallest indivisible segment of a philosophical idea, of an epistemology.

Phoneme is defined as the smallest indivisible unit of sound in a language.

Atom is defined (but in reality isn't) the smallest indivisible unit of matter.

Defining and studying the smallest indivisible units is one of the most powerful tools of science, and we are writing Science Fiction (even Fantasy writers are -- but their science is philosophy.)

So I think we need this concept of Epistememe to discuss the field of Science Fiction and Fantasy writing.

The origin of "language" is the need to survive and reproduce, which for us weaklings means forming groups that can cooperate in food gathering and defense. "No Man Is An Island."

Group formation depends on excluding certain ideas, focusing on the ones which carry meaning that cause the group to survive.

Audible Language depends on excluding certain sounds to lend meaning to other sounds (phonemes) -- to sort the sound-spectrum and assign meaning which can be transmitted. This is a group-agreement necessary for survival. When you cry HELP, someone has to be able to know what you mean.

Groups that have the "word" DUCK! survive better than those whose only Song is 'EEEKKKK!'

But that verbal sorting of our Song probably has to happen AFTER a general agreement on the structure of reality (an epistemology) is reached. (Linguists don't think so.)

But from a writer's perspective, I see the "unthinkable" embedded so deep in language that it is an unexamined premise behind what vocabulary and syntax exists.

For an interesting example and discussion see my series of posts on this blog http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/ on the Swords and Pentacles of the Tarot -- discussing the philosophy that describes the shape of existence which lies outside existence. That magical view of the universe is an example of those unconscious "agreements" that bind a community. The content of the agreement doesn't matter nearly as much as that it is agreed, that it is a Pact.

The Pact Agreement on the concept "is" disallows conceptualizing non-existence as existing. We are trapped by our language in a reality that lacks a structure and function for non-existence. Look at how dependent English syntax is on the verb "to be" in all its conjugations. Not all languages are that dependent.

Language puts epistemological blinders on us. Or (as I suspect) it's the other way around -- first come the blinders, then comes the language that functions in the space defined by the blinders.

EXAMPLE: biggest, meanest male is BOSS. His females get fed first. He can take any female he wants.

This paradigm excludes romance, chivalry etc. Such ideas are literally unthinkable because they have no thinkable epistememe behind them. Like "r" is unpronounceable and un-hearable, chivalry is unthinkable. It's in a blank spot. Chivalry is not an epistememe of this Pact.

If you can see the structural concept I'm playing with here, you can then see how to construct an alien who would have a bunch of trouble communicating with a human in any matter (Honor, Peace Treaty, Defense Alliance, Trade Agreement, Friendship, Love).

Poul Anderson did this repeatedly in developing his aliens. C. J. Cherryh's FOREIGNER series has it nailed.

20th Century American Culture seems to lack a major portion of the "epistememe" RECEIVING.

What trouble would an American Woman have with an Elf (or other magical being; or Bug Eyed Monster) whose cultural Pact originated in RECEIVING, and all of whose cultures and languages lacked some portion of the epistememe for GIVING?

And yes, I said "epistememe" means smallest indivisible unit, but so does Atom. We have to look within the indivisible to discern the structure and to see what happens when the epistememe or the atom is split.

If you've been following what I'm developing here, you should be skipping ahead to think of the whole GOOD Vs. EVIL paradigm blithely assumed as common by Fantasy writers today.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://www.slantedconcept.com

http://twitter.com/JLichtenberg

Heart of Light by Sarah A. Hoyt

This is not a review. I've only read two chapters so far.

However, for those who have been following my Worldbuilding posts, and are interested in what I call "information feed" -- you will find in HEART OF LIGHT an opening which is a perfect example of how to draw readers into a complex world full of twists, turns and surprises.

The first 27 of 502 pages of fairly small print contain no errors of form or technique and no expository lumps. The plot zips along at a good pace, and the surprises abound (if you didn't read the back cover first).

This is an alternate history universe with subtle cultural similarities and differences from our own. The intricacies of the universe far over shadow the characters at the beginning -- and yet, the author sticks right close inside the 2 main characters and gives us the world through their eyes (which are accustomed to their world).

Unfortunately, Amazon does not have a LOOK INSIDE feature for this book so you can see the first few pages without buying the $6.99 (US) book. It's from Bantam Spectra so you may find it in B&N bricks-n-mortar store to look at.

I've already read and will review another Sarah A. Hoyt title, DRAW ONE IN THE DARK, and have a stack more to go through. She seems to write Intimate Adventure against fantasy universe backdrops, and she writes in a firm, high-velocity Romance genre style, taking you through the formation of a "couple" from two individuals. This is good stuff.

There is one caveat though, for writers studying the Sarah A. Hoyt titles, please note that both DRAW ONE IN THE DARK and HEART OF LIGHT contain a classic problem.

In both these novels, Hoyt inserts scenes from other points of view where the entire scene exists only so that the reader knows that one character has informed another character of some plot development that the reader already knows about.

Hoyt does not resort to the "and she told him" ploy, but does not show the character mis-representing what happened, mis-understanding what happened, or just plain lying to twist another character's motivations. Those are reasons to narrate in detail what one character tells another about something the reader already knows about.

Occasionally, there's a bit of two characters telling each other things they already know -- and often the reader already knows all that. Sometimes, though, she uses the dialogue to deposit some exposition -- but rarely to the extent that it becomes a "Lump."

For the most part, these dialogue interludes do not constitute an Expository Lump. All they do is slow up the plot -- which is usually zipping right along.

Hoyt is really good at breaking down a complex universe and feeding it to the reader a bit at a time. Most of the dialogue scenes that should be cut pertain entirely to plot developments. If you're looking for a writer to model your far-out magic-using fantasy universe building on, investigate Hoyt's works. Amazon lists a number of her titles and I've begun posting some of them into the simegen.com bookstore

http://www.simegen.com/marketplace/keybooks/

I haven't forgotten I have some requests for a discussion of why Romance and Paranormal Romance is rather disparaged by many who don't read the genre. Next week and the week after (Oct. 14 and Oct 21, 2008) I will again be away from my desk. Maybe I can get to a new topic after that.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://www.simegen.com/jl/

The Art of Fantasy Worldbuilding In SF

Google Alerts sent me the following alert on "Jacqueline Lichtenberg"

http://www.romancingtheblog.com/blog/2008/05/09/building-your-own-world/

This link is to a blog posted May 9,2008, by Angela Benedetti, which discusses the reasons why a writer should make the effort to construct a fictional world solidly. It's a very well written post (read it, please!) and speaks right to many of the points that I've made recently on this blog. About me, she says:

And if the vampire turns someone, even if it’s only once per book, extrapolate that back for however many centuries or millenia vampires have existed, figure out about how many vampires there probably are in the world, and escalate the problem accordingly. Even the occasional Van Helsing with a satchel full of stakes isn’t going to be able to hold back that particular tide — how long before the human population dwindles to the point where the vampires are all going to starve to death?

This sort of economy of dwindling resources can be done and done well, and turned into an excellent story arc of its own. Jacqueline Lichtenberg wrote a series of SF books where the human race had mutated into two forms, one of which was a vampire-like predator who had to kill one of the other sort each month to survive. The predators started out as a minority population, but about halfway through the series (which covered centuries of future history) she addressed the problem of twelve deaths per year times a lengthening lifespan for the predators multiplied by an expanding predator population, and came up with what she called Zelerod’s Doom, named after the predator mathematician who ran the numbers and gave his people the extremely unwelcome news that Something Had To Be Done by a certain year or they were going to kill all the prey and then starve to death. It was a major plot point of the series and eventually forced a significant shift in the functioning of her society, with all the politics and wars and death and crises this sort of shift usually entails.

This is great worldbuilding, following the implications to their logical conclusion and then using that conclusion to tell an absorbing story. Note also that this sort of conflict would’ve rocked in a romance series — classic Romeo and Juliet stuff.

And of course Angela knows that when the first 8 Sime~Gen novels were published in hardcover and mass market, the SF world would not allow any whiff of Romance in an SF novel, and the Romance world would reject outright any novel that had something vaguely fantasy or Sf about it. Mixing SF and Fantasy was death to sales. I did all of this and more in blatant defiance, but tried not to let them know I was defying them. Really, after all, what they don't know won't hurt them. So here are some clues to what I didn't tell "them."

The Sime~Gen premise is based on the Vampire archetype and welded to an SF framework that has Fantasy "rebar" reinforcing the masonry. It's a complex cross-genre world, so to publish it in the SF genre, most all the fantasy had to be folded inside and underneath so no editor would notice (the fans did, though!)

The following link of my name will take you to the amazon page listing my books where you can find the Sime~Gen titles very easily.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Right after I saw Angela's blog entry, simegen.com acquired a new advertiser who is selling lessons leading to a massage license.

I commented to our sysadmin, Patric Michael, "Well that advertiser certainly belongs on simegen.com because after all it's the root of the Companion's Training." And Patric insisted I write an article about the connection.

In the Sime~Gen premise, the Companion is a kind of voluntary donor to the vampire figure, called a Channel whose major job is Healing and giving Life.

And I started thinking about the Companion's training in terms of this blog.

The Companion and the Channel are the solution to Zelerod's Doom. Working in pairs, they are able to provide all the sustenance the predator Simes require.

Most readers of the Sime~Gen novels assume the Channel has the upper hand, control, power in the ever increasingly intimate relationship between Channel and Companion. They assume it's the Channel's decisions and the Channel's talent that Heals and Sustains, and the Companion just follows along and does as instructed.

NOTHING could be further from the truth.

In any relationship between Sime (predator) and Gen (prey) -- the Gen always has the upper hand, the greatest portion of the "power," and makes the really critical decisions. The Companion uses the Channel to accomplish Healing and other miracles.

It's the Companion's trained and disciplined ability to Heal and use the Channel that allows this whole crazy system of Sime~Gen society to work. A person with Companion's talent who isn't so trained is a monster, a danger, a menace. One fan writer, Andrea Alton, picked up on this and wrote a marvelous story titled ICY NAGER about a Gen turned hunter of the Simes because he had acquired a unique sort of training.

http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/icynager.html

How the Companions learn to use Channels to Heal has been covered in some of the published novels, and explored and elaborated on in many fan written stories (posted online for free reading at http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/ )

But not a lot has been written about how exactly Companions do all this and where those skills came from in our "real" world.

The Worldbuilding process takes a bit of our "real" world and extrapolates it or alters it to serve the constructed world.

Sime~Gen is an SF Universe and most all the stories are pure SF. But the science behind what Companions do is from the Occult Sciences, or Magick which normally is the science behind Fantasy worldbuilding.

At the time the Sime~Gen world was built, Chakras, acupressure and acupuncture, Auras and assorted models of the human nervous system were considered rubbish by mainstream science.

Today reputable chiropractors use acupressure and other procedures related to the nervous circuitry of the human body that manifests as acupressure points.

So today, this science is "science" and when you use it to build a world, you end up with a "science fiction world." When the science stood in disrepute and you used it to build a world, you ended up with a "fantasy world."

If you look at a map of the human nervous system such as acupuncturists use,
http://www.stressreliefproducts.com/charts/large-chart.htm

You see one nervous system with nodes strung along the lines.

A similar chart of a Sime's or a Gen's nervous system would look pretty much the same, differing in some details because both Sime and Gen are mutated Ancients (us).

A Channel's nervous system would be very different from ordinary Simes' and Gens'.

A Channel has two separate but conjoined nervous systems with two sets of nodes running all over the body.

Here's an old, traditional poster of Chakras and information about them:
http://www.yogalifestyle.com/images/Chakra2.jpg

And here's a page of colorful Chakra posters and diagrams
http://spiralvisions.com/chakracises/chakraposters.htm

These two sorts of diagrams of connections that hold a spirit into a body, if extrapolated to a science about the Channel's body and its Healing functions become the basis for the Companion's training. The Companion has to learn to sense these nodes and free up the energy flowing among them. That is done by using personal emotions to affect his/her own body, very much as a Yoga Master can control respiration and heartbeat, etc.

For Ancients, physical stimulation of the points on these diagrams affect strength of body, mind, spirit, psychology, mood, emotions, pain, vigor, well-being, and everything we consider important in life.

Today Massage Therapists, soft tissue workers, chiropractors, healers of all sorts use these theories to alleviate all manner of suffering that conventional medicine just doesn't address.

A number of schools have grown up and there are vigorous arguments among them about what's best for whom under which circumstances.

And so it is with Companions and Channels. They have their colorful and informative charts hung on their office walls, and their erudite arguments and a huge variety of ways they are trained, and those trained this way look down on those trained another way while others invent even more new ways to train people.

But it all boils down to massage therapy. The job of the Companion is to know where to touch a Channel, how hard, how often, in what pattern, and most especially how to use concentration and imagination to affect the condition of the channel's nervous system. There's a lot of book learning behind it all, but most of it is talent, skill, practice, and most of all compatibility with the particular Channel.

The Companion must diagnose the Channel's problem and apply the correct remedy - or the Channel won't be able to save the next life put into his/her care.

The Companion's strength, skill and discipline, (and talent) keep the Channel going, and keep the Channel's perceptions honed to a fine edge so the Channel can diagnose and treat the problem presented by ordinary Simes and Gens (or even other Channels and Companions).

Now why isn't all this explained in detail in the novels? Because there's no way to "show" it and it's mostly irrelevant to the plots (so far).

These stories are set so far into the future that the characters don't know anything about the Chakra charts etc. and the actual Ancient science on which their practices are based. They mostly had to reinvent all this for themselves from scratch. Few Ancient texts survived, though some hidden communities preserved a lot of it.

So the writer has a big problem avoiding expository lumps! All that's visible when a Channel and Companion pair work on a patient is a couple of gestures, a careful touch, a precise repositioning holding the distance between them just so.

When writing from the Channel's point of view, all that shows is the Channel's awareness of the Companion's attention focused at a particular point. If that attention wavers or becomes fuzzy, the Channel can't do his/her work.

The best Companions have not only the talent and training of a Companion, but also good, old fashioned Ancient psychic talent.

A good Companion can see auras as psychics can, and can see the hitches and clogs in the flow of energy among the chakras and pressure points.

It takes training to hone those perceptions, and it takes training to know what to do about any given problem -- and even more training to do it reflexively, easily, and in time to help. Elements of the Companion's training resemble training in the martial arts. Do without thinking.

Not everyone can learn it, not everyone can master it.

Personality also figures in. Channels prefer certain Companions over others. A personal, and very intimate, bond is necessary to produce a really great Channel/Companion team. The tensions and conflicts involved in forming such teams make for a good story.

As the centuries pass, Companion training is standardized so that teams can work together without the long years of forming an intimate bond. This, too, is a situation fraught with dramatic possibilities.

When setting out to do some serious worldbuilding, start with something that is well known and accepted -- add something that's just a crazy theory of the day, a fad maybe, shake well and decant into your novel. See what happens. But when marketing your novel, play your cards close to your chest.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

2 Pentacles - Affairs of Wizards

As noted previously, this is a chapter in a book about the Tarot aimed at Intermediate students of Tarot, not beginners or advanced students. It is particularly aimed at writers looking to learn World Building and Alien Character building.

Updated and expanded compilation of all these Tarot Just For Writers entries is now available on Kindle:

The Wands and Cups Volumes and  the Swords and Pentacles Volumes, are now all available separately on Kindle.  The 5 Volumes combined are also available on Kindle as one book, cheaper than buying them individually.

The Not So Minor Arcana: Never Cross A Palm With Silver Aug 30, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0108MC26O

The Not So Minor Arcana: Wands Sept. 1, 2015  99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106RVPKU

The Not So Minor Arcana: Cups Sept. 11, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106SATX8

The Not So Minor Arcana: Swords  Sept. 17, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0100RSPM2

The Not So Minor Arcana: Pentacles  Sept. 21, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106RVKF0

The Not So Minor Arcana: Books 1-5 combined Sept. 24, 2015 $3.25
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010E4WAOU

This series is designed not for the beginner or the advanced student, but for the intermediate student and specifically for writers doing worldbuilding..

Linnea Sinclair in her October 29, 2007 post, noted how the appeal of Alien Romance lies in the Romance itself when the female lead does not share our cultural expectations of gender roles.

The study of Tarot via the Jacob's Ladder model should give writers a leg up on this difficult task as it delineates the raw experiences of life that would be common among all creatures in all galaxies -- the shared background upon which Romance can be built.

For an example, see my duology, Molt Brother and City of a Million Legends, available on Amazon.com. The alien culture is built on the Tree of Life "Lower Face."

---------------

And Remember: The meaning of a Tarot Minor Arcana resides in the placement on the Tree of Life (i.e. the number on the card) integrated with the "World" or Suit of the card.

For the Tree of Life and the Jacob's Ladder diagrams see:
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~maggyw/treeladder.html

I don't really go with the way this page explains the Tree, but it is worth thinking about. There are many other ways. For now, ponder the diagrams on this page or Google up some others.

I have been posting here since August 14th, every Tuesday, the 10 minor Arcana of the suit of Swords. The Ace of Pentacles was posted Oct 23, 2007.

----------------
2 Pentacles

If the Aces are origins, the condition before anything happens, the point where the entirety of the elemental substance exists as a point, the 2's are the very next moment when differentiation begins to appear.

The 2 of Swords was the moment when the writer who had decided in the Ace of Swords to write a story first sees her words before her eyes. She has externalized something that had formerly been formless and internal.

The 2 of Pentacles is the moment when the writer first feels the impact of the materialization of that idea. (Wands are Ideas.)

Think about what happens when you've sold your first story or novel. Or what happens when someone reads and likes your story.

Think about how that is a moment when your story has become "real" to you on a level you never knew existed before.

This is a moment when what you have created splashes back and changes you. The 6 of Swords which underlies the 2 of Pentacles is the action of striving for change on a soul level.

The change that is striven for was instigated by criticism in 5 Swords and sought in 6 Swords as a new start impelled by Love. In 7 Swords the perception of the values of others, the beauty other people see, impacts and motivates actions anywhere from stealing what others have to copycatting their actions. (think HS girls adopting the dominant girl's dress and accent to don her popularity) And in 8 Swords the results scare you stiff.

Pentacles are Reality, the substance from which all our world is molded and crystallized.

2 is a moment of perception of a division, a dichotomy. The single thing that was so complex you couldn't explain it is now two things.

Yes, that's what happens when you get positive feedback, validation, from another person about something which previously only existed inside your mind. You see your creation through the eyes of another person and it's not the same! (try the feeling when a fan writes a story in a universe you created! Eeerie!)

That vision through the eyes of another sparks your creativity, and suddenly, you get another idea, desire to present that idea, swift decision to do it, and presto you are now juggling two projects.

The Waite Rider deck nailed this one too. It uses a figure juggling two pentacles in an infinity sign. The two projects are related, bound together, but require extreme discipline to balance them against each other.

This is the point in the process where things get really complicated because as you do things that materialize, those things change you -- and you hardly know "who" you are anymore on the ladder of success. It's easy to lose discipline then.

Projects beget projects, complications mount, you get involved in other people's affairs, office politics, messy divorces and even messier marriages, and you find yourself dancing as if in a fairy circle (where they make you dance to death).

This is the quintessence of Multi-Tasking where you may try to be all things to all people and (2 Pentacles Reversed) lose yourself.

The novel plot structure based on this is used in The Dresden Files novels (and TV Series) and is most clearly exemplified in the TV series BURN NOTICE. You also may have seen a more tame version in the TV series THE WALTONS.

Two or more plots going on simultaneously, side by side, each a plot by itself but each also a complication to the other plot. Each simultaneous plot is a sub-plot of the other plot.

Think of the story where a guy has dates with two different girls at the same time on the same night. That's a Two Pentacles moment where the tinge of duplicity from 7 Swords shows through into the materialization (actually getting the dates) of the desire for popularity.

That's what the 2 of Pentacles is about -- complications vying with each other to become main plots. You have a tiger by the tail and there's nothing to do but swarm aboard and ride it.

Thus I call 2 Pentacles getting caught up in the Affairs of Wizards.

And there is an element of magic behind it, an esoteric connection among the plots. That connection is the Theme of the novel or story.

The "theme" of a piece of fiction is what the story is about, what the story says about "life, the universe, and everything." About matters of ultimate concern (i.e. death, immortality, the meaning of life.)

Why do stories have themes?

Ever thought about that? Why do we want to read stories that say something, especially if we might not always agree with what the story says?

Isn't action enough? Isn't character and relationship enough? Why does a story have to say something?

Well. The only reason I can think of is that life itself "says" something, so a story wouldn't seem realistic if it didn't "say" something too.

Each of us lives our life to a purpose, whether we know it or not (as discussed in Wands and Cups). We sometimes look at the lives of others (read biographies of famous people or just talk to people sitting on the benches in the park) and feel they have a purpose and a shape to their lives but "I don't."

Well, from the inside, it's very hard sometimes to see one's own life as purposeful.

I've known writers who struggled to write biographies and were astonished to learn that in order to sell a biography, you not only had to have a famous subject to write about, but you had to have a theme you had found in their lives.

That's right -- biographies get written about people whose lives actually do (or can be made to seem to) exemplify some theme.

That's why you usually see biographies about older people - those who have lived long enough that you can see a pattern in their lives that repeats or moves to a goal. You need a long sample to see the poetry, a whole stanza to hear the music.

But we write novels about young people, and we spend most of our lives as young people! Really! Old age doesn't set in until you stop learning and that's usually only a few years before you leave this world.

So we learn the patterns that life tends to follow from talking to other people, from watching TV and movies, reading books, but usually it isn't obvious what those life patterns are, how they change through life, and what they mean.

Tarot and Astrology chart and follow the change and meaning of life patterns. That's why it seems they can tell you "the future" -- but they can't, not really. They can only tell you the average person's experience with the issues you are dealing with because both techniques are based on empirical research summarized over thousands of case files.

Are YOU an average person? If you're reading this, you probably aren't.

In 2 Pentacles, we first come to grips with a change in our life-pattern that has happened because of the project started in Ace of Wands and brought all the way down.

Remember, in 5 of Swords we confronted criticism, internalized it and either fled or embraced it in 6 Swords, then came to 7 Swords and entered the process of real change.

As noted above 7 Swords underlies the 2 of Pentacles. Check the Jacob's Ladder diagram.

2 Pentacles is the way out of the difficulties of 7 Swords.

2 Pentacles can be thought of as Responsibility, personal responsibility for the concrete results of your own actions and decisions.

Thus 2 Pentacles is the function of taking charge of a matter, issue, affair, deal, project. Or all of the above. That's why it's a juggle.

Why are the 2 Pentacles bound by an infinity symbol though? I'm sure you'll read many explanations, but try this idea out and see if it takes you anywhere.

If the Pentacle is the symbol for crystallized Godshine energy, crystallized Divine Will, and 2 is the awareness of the factoring of a single thing into two things, then perhaps the infinity sign binds the 2 things so we will remember that they are of the infinite and not actually separate from it.

The Universe was Created in balance and always defaults to the balanced condition - "good" balances "evil." The 2 Pentacles is the effort to mix and match our affairs to balance them against each other (playing both ends against the middle; one woman dating two men on the same night when one of the men she's dating is dating two women on the same night) in such a way that we can travel our own path.

That underlying 7 of Swords holds the clue. Venus, the planet of Relationships, of Love, is associated with the 7's. The lesson of the 7 of Swords is all about what is mine and what is yours, about what I may or may not copy or take from you, what you teach me, what I learn, and how it changes me. It's about Relationships and Values. And so is 2 Pentacles.

Which brings us back to the Character Arc -- how characters are changed by the events in their story.

In story as in real life, it's not just people doing things. It's the effect the things people do have on themselves and others. Every thought, word or deed etches its permanent effect on all reality. You are changed by your choices, just as your choices change your world.

That Character Arc of change bespeaks the Theme most closely, most artistically. A novel will stand or fall on whether the Characters change in believable ways.

And so does your life.

However, we learn from watching others live that there are very real limitations on who can change into what, how fast. Thus novels fail if the characters change too fast.

We learn from Astrology that people can become a better (or worse) version of themselves, but they will always be the same Self.

As we age, we don't become different -- we become more-so.

If this is true of humans, I'm betting its true of any aliens we might meet, too.

So in 7 Swords we begin to act on what we learned of love in 5 and 6 of Swords. We let change ripen within us, we try to re-model ourselves after the habits and values of others. We steal, or copycat, actions of others.

Those efforts in 7 Swords can produce a proliferation of affairs, a multiplying of concrete effects in 2 Pentacles.

For example, you set out to write a book on deadline, renovate a house and flip it, or finish a degree in college to get a raise -- you take on a project appropriate to the New You that will improve you and your life.

And as a result you meet someone who needs help moving because he can't afford to hire Two Guys And A Truck, so you help. That strains your back, so you can't work on your project.

So the person you helped brings you groceries and stays to help on your project. "You dictate; I'll type it for you."

Leaving, your new friend can't get his car started. Helping him, you accidentally set his car on fire. You tell him you'll pay for the uninsured part of the damage if he'll help you get your book to the publisher on time, or fix the house to sell it, or finish your degree work so you can get the raise.

That's a 2-Pentacles situation where you get deeper and deeper into juggling the affairs of others as you take personal responsibility for the changes in the world wrought by the New You.

Because of the change inside you, you attract people who take responsibility for the changes they make in your life.

That reciprocity is represented by the 2-Pentacles bound by infinity. Reciprocity balances the world's affairs.

2 Pentacles Reversed will be very familiar to most who have been members of organizations -- a garden club, a dance troop, a choir, a critique group.

There is always the newcomer who arrives and volunteers for everything, works up a furious storm producing wonders for the organization, then poops out, drops out, disappears leaving responsibilities unfulfilled in an organization that is now larger than the available workforce can handle.

That over-loaded volunteer suffered a 2 Pentacles Reversed when things happened in life that should have been budgeted for in time and energy, but weren't. Very often, in a 2 Pentacles Reversed moment, all responsibilities get dropped instead of just the excess ones.

2 Pentacles Reversed happens because of too many irons in the fire, an unrealistic (Pentacles is reality) assessment of the extent of resources to cover obligations. A lack of BALANCE between commitments and resources.

If the person hasn't internalized the changes from 6 of Swords, and hits 7 Swords with the same habits in place, a side-step into 2 Pentacles will result in this sort of disaster.

The remedy is in the 8 of Swords -- facing fears, assessing hazards realistically, learning to take damage to achieve an objective, working the equation of ambition vs. ability so it balances and can stabilize you through the 9 of Swords.

Sometimes that damage you have to take is simply saying "no" when someone asks you to volunteer for one more thing than you can handle. The damage is to your self-image.

The test of 2-Pentacles is of your ability to assess the changes wrought via 6 of Swords (which is also the Ace of Pentacles - a new start) -- and realistically measure your ability to take on responsibilities in the material world.

If you fail the test (we all have; don't be embarrassed), take your project back to the 7 Swords process and move it through 8 Swords and on into 9.

Of course, at 8 Swords you have the option of skipping over to 3 Pentacles, if you're brave enough, strong enough, committed enough.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

Granddaughters And World Building

Folks:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crafting Challenging Relationships in SFR - David Speaks Out

An author is blessed not only when fans read her books, but when they actually become interested in--and excited by--the creation of a novel...the characters, the world building, the behind-the-scenes stuff. David Gray is such a fan. He's fascinated by the whys and wherefores, not only because he likes my books and the science fiction/science fiction romance genres in particular, but because he's crafting his owns worlds, his own characters. So I asked him to share some of his thoughts in this blog as to what he's doing with the emotional machinations and "intimate adventures" of his characters. I think you'll find it as thought provoking as I did (and yeah, writers do play with the strangest ideas!) ~Linnea

Hi, all! And thanks, Linnea, for inviting me over to guest-blog on Alien Romances!

Last monday, Linnea posted a blog -- Love Beyond Boundaries -- and continued on the topic of barriers that challenge the development of romantic relationships between individuals -- a ready source of the very conflict that makes a story work. I found this particularly relevant to my own fictional work-in-progress. Linnea cited several examples of society's traditional taboos, and in my story, set a century and a half into our future, these still hold stubbornly true in one form or another.

Take my main character and his love interest, for example. Daie Fahr is a commoner with ambiguous religious beliefs. He was born and raised on an agricultrual colony planet in another solar system. His accent, his idiomatic expressions and slang, all mark him as an outsider. Anya, the apple of his eye, comes from a well-to-do family on Earth. She's well educated, dresses in the current fashions, and adheres to a fairly rigid belief system. Anya has never left Earth. She's also never met an alien in person, while Daie spent a couple of years on a commercial hub space station -- he ran into them all the time. Daie's immediate environments have always been fairly remote as well. Anya lives on a planet teeming with people. Even aside from these obvious things, Daie's lack of inherent bias against those different from himself, particularly aliens, makes him a potential outcast even among his own kind.

At great odds with these two is the nearly symbiotic relationship between two of my alien species. The one is indigenous to their now-shared home-world while the other is a long-ago transplant -- in essence, an invader. If ever there was a barrier, that ought to be one. Moreover, the indigenous race is corporeal while the other, in its adult stage of life, is ethereal. Nevertheless, over time the two have crossed the boundaries that separated them and learned to coexist so well together that neither would now dream of an existence without the other. Moreover, this hybridization of their cultures has allowed them to advance their knowledge and expand their reach to the point that they have long since become the dominant species in this particular universe. Ironically, that in itself is enough to cause resentment on behalf of other species, humans included.

As you may have surmised, I like to tinker with things. I think Linnea calls it what-if-ing. It's like playing with a chemistry set made of characters and settings. Mix, stir, BOOM! Stuff happens. Whether reading or writing, this is the appeal for me of SFR as a sub-genre -- the maximum potential for situational diversity, by way of a science fictional universe, combined with the exploration of personal relationships, by way of romance. And, of course there's the HEA factor. Yes, guys like HEAs, too. Given such widely variable perspectives amongst the characters, is it any wonder why SFR/RSF is so exciting to read? Every one of these people is embarking on their own Intimate Adventure, about to be afforded an opportunity to walk a mile in another's shoes and maybe see if they should re-examine what they believe and why. They might just get a whole new slant on what unconditional love really is.

Cheers,
David Gray

Presidential Politics Alien Style

Folks:

This is a blog about Alien Romance, but a while ago someone asked about the writing technique known as Worldbuilding -- and for most of my posts since, I've been developing a long instructional piece on how to do the kind of thinking native to SF while still telling a whopping romance story.

Most people think of worldbuilding as having to do with science -- and sometimes they dare to include sociology or psychology. But the real point of all the science (how big is the world you're building, what's its gravity, what kind of sun does it have, moons?, cycles and seasons, evolutionary pressures, contact with other worlds in this galaxy or another etc. etc) the real point is to start with the physics of the star's makeup, project what kind of worlds would circle that star, start with a raw dead hunk of rock and develope an environment conducive to life.

Then you have to populate that environment with plants and animals (or some bizarre equivalent) from single protein molecules on up -- then figure what pressures that environment would put on life to force the development of intelligence -- THEN decide what sort of Divine intervention actually happened to produce people, or what sort of Divine intervention those people postulate and/or believe solemnly.

And the point of all this -- ROMANCE!

The point of thinking through each step from raw sun to rock to life to intelligence is to postulate how physiology and environment combine to generate cultures.

Yes, Alien Romance is inherently about intercultural communication -- which may often include conflict. And where there's conflict, there's STORY.

But what good is all that hard work if the people who read your story don't understand it or care to try to understand it?

Your story has to say something about today, humanity, life on earth, our cultures and their conflicts. A story has to be relevant to its times (no matter if set in the future like Star Trek or set in the past like a time-travel romance).

The whole point of writing a story at all is to arouse the reader and provide an emotional experience they couldn't get from "real" life. But they must return to "real" life with some new point of view, some new idea, (this is SF Romance or Romantic SF -- any way you slice it Alien Romance is primarily SF and thus the Literature of Ideas - so readers must return to reality with an IDEA to think about and explore.)

You want to get famous as a writer? Produce ideas your readers will TALK about to their friends, thus inducing people to read your books.

So where do writers get those kinds of ideas? SF ideas?

Just watch the evening news!

We just saw an election in France that promises to change the political course there -- toward building a more capitalistic economy and edging away from the kind of economy that failed in Japan where laws made it hard or impossible for corporations to fire people. Strangely, the inability to fire people means that unemployment goes up and up and UP and the government crashes down in revolution -- or as in Japan, things get changed on the government level.

Now the USA faces a truly important Presidential Election. No matter which side you're already on, you know that the choice we make in 2008 will change things in the whole world.

Nearly a year before the first primary we have a field of 18 candidates - 10 of them Republican.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are going into this presidential campaign. It's a spectacle to rival the Roman Circus!

What's an SF writer looking for an Alien Romance story to do if the source of ideas is the evening news? And all that's on is Presidential Debates?

Sit back, put on your alien ears, and just listen to what these people are saying. Oh, yeah, they're all politicians. Like preachers, they have learned a certain "cant" -- a chant, a tune, a manner of speaking and a set of phrases, jargon, and so on, mostly incomprehensible to someone who's not American or maybe British (though I have to admit I don't understand British politics at all.)

Well, I did this exercise the other night and I've been watching the sound-bytes and reading some articles online -- and one thing leaps out at me more starkly even than in prior campaigns.

These characters all try to distinguish themselves from each other by WHAT they will FIGHT FOR -- not about their attitude toward fighting in general.

"Elect me and I'll fight for your right to X, Y, Z."

They'll fight global warming; they'll pledge to fight whatever people don't like at the moment.

How would that sound to someone from that planet we invented above, the planet upon which a species evolved to produce a major Hunk our Earthling can fall in love with while hating or rescuing him?

How we choose the SUN around which this bare rock forms -- (yes, worldbuilding goes that far back -- how you choose the sun) -- will determine whether politicians from those civilizations FIGHT or whether they PROBLEM SOLVE instead.

Do they argue instead of negotiate? Do they keep arguing until they convince everyone -- are their elections about finding out what is right instead of who is right?

If so, then our elections and our Presidential Politics will look pretty ridiculous or incomprehensible -- "How can you settle a war by fighting? It makes no sense."

Thus our glorious Hunk looks upon the Love of His Life who is running for President of the USA on the pledge to FIGHT FOR GALACTIC PEACE, and runs for the hills!

Ooops. Back to choosing the right sun to build our world around.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

The Big Bang

I had the extreme pleasure of presenting a workshop with some of the other outstanding authors on this blog and my part of it was on world building which I thought I share here today.

How to build a Universe.
Keep is simple. You do not want to spend the entire book explaining things.

Stargazer: page 181\
He slid the canvas away and ducked as a squeal and the slapping of skin came toward his head.
“Worrats,” he spat out in disgust. “They always stay away from the lighted areas.”

Without describing the “Worrats” you know what they are. Just add a few words here and there, enough to make it “sound” futuristic.

Shooting Star: page 132

Everything was so primitive. There wasn’t a piece of pexi or tunstun in sight.

Where does your story take place? On a planet? On a ship? Set the scene
Stargazer: the planet Oasis: page 56
They soon came out of the darkness of space and into the clear blue skies of Oaisis. Shaun found a set of eye shields; the air was so clean that it made the color more intense, and his eyes were still not accustomed to the brightness. They were soon flying over fields that were abundant with crops. The landscape was a myriad of bright color as the greens and golds of grains contrasted sharply with the pinks, purples, and reds of fields of flowers. In the distance glittered what looked like a huge diamond. It turned out to be a city of pure white granite that rose up from the landscape as if it had been carved from a mountain. It was surrounded by lush gardens full of flowers of every possible color, which stood out in sharp contrast against the pure whiteness of the walls of the city.
“We use every part of our planet; nothing goes to waste,” Lilly said, proud of her homeland.

Shooting Star: the planet Lavign: page 120
His door was one of three that led off the big room. There was a door in the middle of one wall that led outside. All he saw beyond it was green.
“This way,” Boone said and turned Ruben toward the back of the house. They made their way into another room where Tess was standing over a stove that had to be older than time. He saw flames shimmering beneath a pot that she stirred.
“Where am I?” he said again as he hobbled through with Boone and Ky’s help towards another door. “What is this place?”
They walked out onto a covered porch and he saw a garden, a large tower with metal blades slapping around in the breeze and some other buildings that he did not have the time or inclination to figure out at the moment.
Boone pointed to a narrow shack at the end of a trail of smooth stones.
“The necessary,” he announced.
Ruben quirked an eyebrow as they hobbled down the path. As he opened the door his nostrils were assaulted with a horrible smell and he realized that there was nothing there beyond a hole in the ground and a wooden seat. The bright sunlight that streamed though two cuts in the exterior wall did nothing to cheer up the interior.
“When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go,” he told himself as he stood before the hole.
It wasn’t until he saw that the fluid coming out of him was bright blue that he realized he was in trouble.




Transportation
What do your cars look like? Your ships? Firefly used space ships and horses. Once again there is no need for indepth description unless you character is just arriving to your invented world

Food Sources
Grown normally? In space on giant asteroids? Manufactured in a factory?

Social Status
Royalty? Slavery? Just a regular guy? Outlaw? What are the crimes and the penalties?

Entertainment
I created The Murlacca…A gladiator type battle fought with hooked blades. The champions are treated like the athletes of today but it also used as execution for political prisoners. If you feel the need to explain the rules of the game have one of your viewers be witnessing it for the first time while the companion explains it.

Slang
That’s where you can really have fun. My teenagers in Star Shadows use Gank for Nerd, Geek, Jerk. Just make something up and slip it into the conversation as you would a current word. The readers will figure it out.

Politics
This is where it can get complicated. All worlds have some sort of political structure. This is where notes come in handy. If you’re writing a series then maintain continuity. My Star series has three political factions struggling for control.

A Different Solution To Global Warming

The debate is still open on how much of Earth's temperature rise is due to the natural glaciation cycle and how much to human activity.

But it's pretty definite that we're in a very steep warming cycle, and losing species fast.
I read recently that there are a number of human-food species in our oceans that are in danger of sudden collapse.

The bees from a number of continents are dying off -- here there's some kind of infection in commercial hives, and the move northward of killer bees that don't pollinate but do invade domestic bee hives and destroy them.

The cost of food is rising because of the cost of renting bee hives to pollinate. A worldbuilding writer could forecast famine.

A huge number of frog species are going extinct. Amphibians seem to be reproductively sensitive to something that's killing them off. Fast. They're a vital link in the food chain.
Rise in temperature is causing migrations -- and the creep of tropical diseases north and southward from the equator.

Some of this is due to global warming -- changing habitats and water availability. Some is due to pollution. Some to the increase of UV from atmospheric pollution done decades ago when nobody believed aerosols could cause a problem in the arctic -- and nobody cared about the antarctic because it was so far away.

So an sf writer who wants to do some worldbuilding futurology has to look at what changes the increase in global temperatures may bring -- and it's not just ocean levels rising.

To cope with these conditions, humans will develop better buildings against storms, better flood control, and cheaper air conditioning.

But the really big profits will be in terraforming Earth -- trying to control the glaciation cycles, to reverse the damage from global warming.

Clearly, of course, we will try to preserve the genetic specimens from species going extinct. And we'll try to re-breed and rebuild those species.

We'll have to study and breed and release microbes -- and no doubt we'll make mistakes.
But there is one response to global warming that I can't recall ever being discussed on TV or in magazines.

We are all set to spend money looking for cheap renewable energy resources and to control the greenhouse gas emissions of power plants and vehicles.

But that may not be an effective approach. It may not target the actual cause.

RESTRICTING human activity and trying to eliminate greenhouse gas production might not work. Instead, we should be looking at the other side of the problem -- not restricting our emissions but increasing the Earth's ability to recycle greenhouse gases.

Today, human activity has reduced the Earth's ability to absorb and recycle Co2 -- cutting down the Brazlian rain forrest (and forrests in the USA early in the 18th century), and spreading oil slicks and other chemicals on the oceans which is killing plankton and other ocean surface plants that absorb CO2 and release O2.

We need to stop destroying the Earth's ability to recycle greenhouse gasses more than we need to pull back on our production of them.

Suppose industry saw a profit to be made in increasing Earth's ability to absorb and recycle pollutants to match our production of them?

The richest people in the world would be those who could produce trees, plankton, and other plants with more acre-feet of leaf surface and faster C02 recycling.

In our current world, a goodly number of people are convinced that the Western industrial lifestyle is wrong, or even just plain evil. Their response is to make an all-out effort to destroy Western economies that are based on such absolute immorality.

Here you can listen online to some of their reasons and decide for yourself if they're wrong.

http://www.obsessionthemovie.com/index1.php

Now do some SF worldbuilding and visualize the future they are driving toward.

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

Strange Brews

I think my aural memory is very good, but sometimes it isn't.

For instance, I was absolutely certain that I knew the opening lines to The Eagles quintessentially seventies song "Life in the Fast Lane."

Mea culpa. I thought the heroine was terminally vain.

I listened to that song a lot while writing about Insufficient Mating Material's fashionista heroine who was so pampered, she could not even undress without the hero's help, and the slightly brutal Djetth (Jeth).

It wasn't my imaginary theme song for the book, but I felt an affinity.

A couple of days ago, I learned that the heroine was "terminally pretty" (to rhyme with "the hard cold city"). How devastating to know that I have been mistaken for more than two decades!

OK. I will admit it. I loved The Cream song, Strange Brew but I never have been clear what it is about. When I was a giddy youth, I didn't read the transcripts on the backs of LPs.

These songs recapture my happiest memories -- well... I should modify that, but the late sixties, seventies and eighties were fabulous, and that's when I had time to listen to the radio, and when I judged potential boyfriends by their record collections.

Did anyone else do that? Or am I truly weird?

LP-Harmony!!!!

I've also been polling my internet acquaintances about their opinions of Newsletters put out by authors, because I am on a panel speaking about the virtues of Newsletters on behalf of the EPIC organization (for electronically published authors) at the upcoming Romantic Times convention.

More than once as my questionnaires came back to me, I heard that readers love recipes in authors' newsletters. Good grief, people are interested in what I eat, whether I cook it, and what ingredients I use! Who knew?

Music, recipes... now add Linnea Sinclair's barman, Sin.

When you write do you follow the What's In Your Wallet? line of characterization?

Some characterization pundits advise authors to make lists of what is in their heroes' pockets.

(I tried that in Insufficient Mating Material, with good reason. My survival consultant, Les Stroud, aka Survivorman always tells the Science Channel viewer what, apart from his multi-tool, is in his pocket when he is stranded on a deserted island or other hostile-to-life spot.)

How about, What's In Your Drink? (I have paranoid, intergalactic superspy heroes who wonder that, too.)

Let's take world-building to an appropriate level. What do your inter-stellar characters drink for survival, for sustenance, for pleasure, and for a buzz?

Is it basically a gin and tonic with dye in it? Is it green small beer? (That's a fraction deeper than you think). Is it Blue Curacao with vodka? Is water the champagne of the future? Or serum?

Who saw Antz? The Bar Scene? Drinking from the aphids' butts (not that I recommend it, but does it have potential for an alien lifestyle)? There was another bar scene in An Ant's Life. Cartoons can be highly creative.

Well, here's the kicker.

Tonight (Sunday 9 -11 pm Eastern), April Fools' Night, with the moon all but full, Linnea, Susan, Colby and Rowena are going to be appearing in character on the Passionate Internet Voices Radio in order to put the lot together.

We'll be in Linnea's Intergalactic Bar and Grille (a franchise thereof) with Sin the bartender making otherwordly drinks. And we'll be planning a big surprise for Earth.

Best wishes,

Rowena

Galactic Gabbing: Confessions of a Word Slut

I’m a word slut. In fact, if there was a Wordaholics Anonymous, I’d be right there in the front row, ‘fessing up to my addiction. So it was with great interest I read Margaret Carter’s recent blog here, WATCHING LANGUAGE.

A professional etymologist, I’m not. Strictly amateur here, from a life-long love of reading and a life-long love of eavesdropping and people-watching. (In fact, consider the word: “eavesdropping.” Wow, what a wacko word when you realize what it actually says. I’d love to know what the lower edge of a roof has to do with being nosy though visually I can rather see it.) See, this is what I mean. I’m easily seduced whilst reading or conversing by a flirtatious set of letters.

I recently taught a writing workshop in the Orlando, Fl area and—not surprisingly—at the luncheon after several writers and I were discussing words (well, golfers talk about golf clubs and golf balls, the tools of their trade!). One gal—and apologies but I forget who told me this delightful anecdote—mentioned her editor (who is an Aussie, I believe) questioned her use of …”All of a sudden.” As in…ALL of a sudden? Show me HALF of a sudden.

Wow, what a wacko phrase. That received a delighted chortle from me. Half of a sudden. ::snort!:: Love it.

So that brings me to crafting languages—as I do in my books—for non-Earth based characters.

I’ve blogged a bit on that last year (in case you missed them). They’re articles originally published by SFROnline. You can find them here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2006/10/part-uno-speaking-in-alien-tongues.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2006/11/part-deux-swearing-in-alien-tongues.html

So I know I’ve warbled on this subject already. However, Margaret’s blog renewed my fervor for galactic gabbing and how it’s done.

It’s done just as we do it here. Depending on how you structure your Not-Earth culture, you hone done or fluff out their language in the same way. If they’re not spacefaring, if they’re xenophobic, then chances are—and I do love the comment by Anon on Margaret’s post—their language won’t remotely suffer from the “cribhouse whore” syndrome. It will probably be predominantly purely their own and—depending on how you structure their religion and politics—there may even be a penalty for using anything but their “pure” language.

Spacefaring cultures, to me, would be the most likely to have a real mixture and far more slang, simply do to the taint of continuous exposure to other cultures. Those would be the most fun to create and write.

The hard part is translating this—kinda sorta—into English. I know someone’s translated Shakespeare into Klingon. But for the most part, a NY publishing house is not going to buy an entire SF novel written in Vekran or Alarsh. So as an SF/SFR author, you have the daunting task of doing all this delightful linguistic work knowing 90 percent of it will be backstory, and never make the pages of the novel.

But you have to do it. It’s as much a part of your required world building as religion or politics. The entire galaxy does NOT speak English. Yes, your novel is written in English (or French or Portuguese or Russian) but you have to be aware, when you’re crafting character, dialogue, etc.., that your character is the product of a Non-Earth culture (if that is, in fact, the case). Your character IS his or her (or its) local galactic culture and will be aware of speech patterns (and differences) from other galactic cultures. Not only does everyone in the galaxy not speak English or Portuguese but they don’t speak Alarsh, either.

In the same way you’re away of the accents and speech patterns of those around you—in the supermarket, at the airport, at a meeting—your characters are aware of others’ word use, word choice and accent. There are differences in the same “planetary culture” just as there are here: someone from Alabama speaks differently from someone from Maine. Or London. It’s not just accent. It’s also slang. Cadence. Rapidity (or not) of speech. And at this point, it’s still the same language.

How about a “universal” language? In a spacefaring culture, I’d deem that possible. English has been crowned the official language of the air: commercial pilots and air traffic controllers all over this planet are required to speak English. There’s also Esperanto, that kind of one-size-fits-all attempt at a global language.

So I think it’s reasonable to posit an official language of the spaceways as long as you remember—when crafting characters and dialogue—that someone from Cirrus One Station may not pronounce the words in the same way that someone from Delos-5 would. Again, Alabama and Maine. Or even more, a Frenchman or Italian speaking English (as a secondary language) or an American speaking French (as a secondary language). There will be a noticeable accent. There will even be mispronunciations. Which lends to…unique characters and believable world building.

And slang—well, that’s my favorite part, as many of you know. Slang will be the one thread of constant miscommunication through it all. I have no idea why something that’s soda in New Jersey is pop in Michigan. But I really, really want to see a “half of a sudden.” And I want to know how my character would say it in Alarsh.


(From THE DOWN HOME ZOMBIE BLUES by Linnea Sinclair, coming November 2007 from Bantam)

Blurb: After almost twenty years on the job, Bahia Vista homicide detective, Theo Petrakos, is used to the fact that almost everyone in Florida is from somewhere else. Then a mummified corpse and a room full of high tech computer equipment sends Guardian Force commander and intergalactic zombie hunter, Jorie Mikkalah, into his life. And ‘illegal alien’ takes on a whole new meaning...



The rear cargo door of the vehicle suddenly flew open. But no weapons turrets protruded, nothing lethal emerged. Jorie slowly let out the breath she didn’t realize she had been holding and watched him transfer the small black boxes to the rear cargo area. The long box went in, too. She was considering how to take him from behind when, damn! damn! He stepped back to the door on the navigator’s side, bent over and came out with the T-MOD in his grasp.

There it was. She had to take possession of it now. It shouldn’t be difficult. He was a nil, a civilian. She was an expertly trained military commander with the element of surprise.

She rose in one smooth, swift, practiced movement.

And her scanner screeched out an intruder alert.

Zombie.

So much for keeping a low profile.

“Run!” Jorie screamed at him, her heart pounding in her throat as she tabbed the laser in her right hand up to hard terminate. “Run!”

She grabbed her other laser and barreled across the lawn. “Drop the T-MOD! Run!” A sickly green glow formed in the night gloom off to her left. She laced the spot with both her lasers, aware the stupid nil was still standing there, T-MOD in his hands, staring at the expanding portal.

Just as she reached him the green cloud erupted into hard form maybe two maxmeters away, about level with the top of the high hedge. Its diameter was small. Bliss luck, she’d done some damage. But she hadn’t stopped it. Yet. She fired off three more bursts then swung around to face the nil, bringing her micro-rifle across her chest as she did. “Drop the unit, damn you!” Her breath was coming in hard gasps. “That’s a zombie. It’ll kill you!”

The man stared down at her. And then Jorie remembered: the entire universe did not speak Alarsh.

But that was the least of her problems. The zombie had arrived.



~Linnea
www.linneasinclair.com
SFRomance from Bantam Spectra

A picture is worth a thousand words

Cover art is supposed to do the job, and we've talked about that on this blog.

But what happens when your cover art doesn't communicate what the author thinks it should communicate? Can you compensate? Should you?

Notice the caveat. I'm talking about what I think, and I concede that I may not be right. An aurora borealis and a naked couple rolling about in the sea does not communicate "alien romance" or even "survival romance" to me.

It probably says "Sex!" Maybe even "Fallible, unreliable, all-too-human sex!" given my title, which is actually a chess term for a "No-win situation" but not a lot of people realize that.

So, when I set off on a booksigning (drive-by) tour down I-75, I took my poster with me. If an author has a visual aid with her, I think she has a better shot at making an impression.

I felt a little self-conscious thrusting my custom poster under busy romance experts' noses, but even a picture of a naked man is more interesting than much else I can think of, and self-promotion is not a game for the shrinking violet.

On the left are scenes from my "novel trailer" (done by Edward Traxler) showing planets and spaceships (for space), a couple of aviation dogfights (action), parachutes and exploding stars (space and action), a naked man (ah, well, if you've got one, flaunt him), a conflagration.

On the right were jpgs given to me personally by Survivorman, who was my survival consultant to make sure I translated all my research into plausible action, and who also gave me some really cool survival tips... not to mention the cover quote. The slides show a conch, which is a handy container for boiling water on the campfire, a fishing technique using whittled sticks, a shelter.

In my opinion, if you are making a book trailer, you should consider what other uses you could make of custom artwork stills!

Signed copies of Insufficient Mating Material are at:

KY

Barnes & Noble Booksellers
1932 Pavilion Way
Lexington, KY 40509
859-543-8518


TN

Barnes & Noble Booksellers
8029 Kingston Pike
Knoxville, TN 37919
865-670-0773


GA

Barnes & Noble Booksellers
50 Barrett Pkwy Suite 1100
Marietta, GA 30066
770-422-2261

Barnes & Noble Booksellers
3625 Dallas Hwy SW
Marietta, GA 30064
770-424-0511

Barnes & Noble Booksellers
2952 Cobb Pkwy
Atlanta, GA 30339
770-953-0966

FL

B.Dalton Booksellers
Regency Square Mall
9501 Arlington Expressway #250
Jacksonville, FL 32225
904-721-2446

Barnes & Noble Booksellers
9282 Atlantic Blvd
Jacksonville, FL 3225
904-721-2446

Barnes & Noble Booksellers
10280 Midtown Parkway
Jacksonville, FL 32225
904-928-2027

(Also, Barnes & Noble Booksellers

The Streets of Westchester
9455 Civic Centre Blvd
West Chester, OH 45069
513-755-2258)


see the Insufficient Mating Material video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLuEtY7oP7A


INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL takes up where FORCED MATE ended, with Djetthro-Jason (Jethro-Jason) severely beaten, about to undergo surgery to change his face and identity before his shotgun wedding to the frivolous Princess Martia-Djulia (Marsha-Julia).

No one gives a thought to what Martia-Djulia might do when she realizes that it’s not her unsuitable lover, Commander Jason, but a stranger being frog-marched up the aisle to become her Mate.

Her surprising reaction sets off a firestorm of rumor… and rattles a murderer who thought he’d gotten away with an ancient crime.

INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL EXCERPT

A Tricky Experiment

“Maybe, sweetheart, we should have sex to prove to you that you can and will enjoy it.”
“I enjoyed it once. I am very happy with my memories. I don’t need you or your experiment to prove anything,” she said stiffly.
“Once?” He raised an eyebrow. His lips twitched. Too late, Martia-Djulia realized that she had just contradicted one of her earlier statements.
“The Aim of the Experiment is to discover whether or not we are sexually compatible,” Djetth said loftily. She suspected that he was amusing himself by parodying a formal checklist. “Method: to have mind-blowing recreational sex using positions and techniques that mitigate or avoid unfortunate consequences. Expected result--”
“What unfortunate consequences?”
“Insects in your hair?” he teased. “Sand in your baby box. A baby. Infection. Injury. Legal consummation of a Mating we might not want.”
His gaze flickered. Martia-Djulia had the impression that his list was deliberately ordered.
“Injury to whom?” she asked, ignoring the glossed over “baby.”
“I’ve wondered why you haven’t blasted me backward onto my butt since our Mating Day. I’ve certainly deserved it.”
“Yes you have!” she agreed heatedly.

ISBN 0-505-52711-1

Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry

Shen and Shid, it's Tuesday!

Folks:

Excuse my Simelan invective! Translations: it doesn't translate, but these two words refer to the psychological and physical damage done by an interrupted transfer of selyn. Such language is not used in polite company.

Linnea related her traffic accident woes, and at the same time that was happening to her, "stuff" was happening to me, too.

I'm going to relate some of that story simply on the theory that there could be readers here who want to be professional writers but think that those who write professionally "have time" that others don't.

"Real life" does sit heavily on writers of all types.

My mundane story de jour is simply a rusted out hot water heater that splushed and revealed a design flaw in my house.

The builder did indeed follow code and put the gas water heater up on a platform so the ignition wouldn't set off an explosion if fumes from the cars (it's in the garage) etc. collected near the floor.

But the builder cheaped out and made that platform LOOK like a block of cement -- but it wasn't. It's a hollow cube made by some lumber at the corners, connecting lumber, and a top.

It does hold the 50 gallon tank, but what if I had bought the 65 gallon tank I really wanted? It would have fit the space, but been much heavier. But it was out of stock and I needed that new water heater NOW.

So I got the 50 gallon one.

We discovered the disaster about 4:30 on Sunday -- shut off the water and gas -- called Sears -- bought the new heater and put in the work order for installation the next day.

After several games of phone tag, we got the installer over at 3:30PM on Monday (President's Day) -- by 4, the true extent of the water damage was apparent and we had a Water Damage expert arrive by 5:30 -- laying a cost of thousands upon us.

If the builder had correctly designed the water tank installation, there would have been no damage.

My husband went to Home Depot and got an aluminum tray they sell to make up for this chronic mis-design by builders. Ever wonder why Home Depot isn't in the house building business?

We have yet to get a plumber to hook that tray up to drain to the outdoors, so this won't happen again.

Meanwhile, as the water damage expert sat and waited, we got a house insurance claim number, then filled out the work order. The claims adjuster is supposed to come by on Thursday to inspect the old heater (which we had to have returned because the nice installer took it away so it wouldn't cost extra for the city to haul it away.)

The water damage guy is due here any moment for a follow-up visit.

Silly me, when laying out my work schedule to ramp up for ConDor I forgot to include busted water heater, just as Linnea forgot to include traffic accident in her course planning.

But meanwhile, I have recommended her online course on torturing characters to one of my writing students! Great course title!!!

Now, all those who want to get their writing up to selling -- remember, "life" doesn't stop knocking you over, down, and sideways even when you have contracts arears, or a burning urge to get something on the market now!

And those following my sequence of World Building posts -- these two incidents in two writer's lives are the sum and substance of where we get our worldbuilding ideas. It's how you learn to think like a hero. It's where those questions arise that lead to whole new alien worlds.

What would happen if a house builder from Earth tried to set up a business on some far off planet in some other solar system -- with people who were far from human?

What would happen to a house builder from Earth using these kinds of business practices who tried to set up a business on Vulcan?

What planets are there out there where a builder from Earth could actually do better than he/she was doing on Earth?

And how about fantasy? How would Harry Dresden's world deal with the problem of elevating a gas water heater? Harry can heat water with magic, but it's expensive. His presence has a negative effect on the laws of physics (they haven't brought that out yet in the TV series and I don't know if they will).

And what about all the laws of traffic accidents among aliens? What a way to meet the hunk-of-your-life! How do you cope with whiplash while falling in love?

THAT is how writers do worldbuilding -- by noticing the story potential in everyday events.

That is where we get all our crazy ideas -- from the boring, mundane, distractions from writing.

Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/