Giving A Shit. Or Not. (Of Word Choices, Word Order, And Grammar.)

Grammar, word choice, and punctuation are a matter of courtesy. Poets and Yoda may turn sentences around, but the meaning is clear. Rules are still followed.  If fictional, green, space aliens can make sense, shouldn't the rest of us?

Perhaps the courtesy bit is being taken too far. Clarity of meaning might be more important... unless the intention is deliberately to mislead.

How about this: "...beleaguered Name-Your-State governor XYZ".  Does that headline tell you if it was the State or the Governor that is beleaguered? No. Does it matter? Yes. It would be easy to change the word order, and much more courteous of the journalist and his/her/their editor.

I have a German friend who says "I give a shit for U," when he means that his emotional investment in "U" is the lowest possible.  There is nothing lower than a bowel movement, right?

Or is being given  "nothing at all, not even a bowel movement" even less respect?

An English friend would say "I don't give a shit for 'U'" meaning that even the most disrespectful action is more attention and time than he is willing to accord to  'U',  whomsoever or whatever 'U' stands for.

Kenneth Beare's article for thoughtco.com on the differences between American and British English as regards grammar, spelling, and word choice is succinct and interesting, especially regarding the simple past and present perfect.

https://www.thoughtco.com/differences-between-american-and-british-english-1212216

Leo McKinstry for the British Daily Mail penned a jolly good piece about Political Correctness and word choice. Apparently, the populace of Great Britain is assumed --by the elites-- to have the vocabulary and understanding of a five-year old, and therefore, because one five-year-old assumed that the reflective devices embedded in roads to mark the lanes at night are feline body parts, "cats' eyes" must now be called "road studs".

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5094791/A-Z-politically-correct-madness.html

How long will it be before itinerant gigolos decide that "road studs" is an offensive term?

How much will language be impoverished, not to mention the resources for humorists, wits, and stand up comedians, if vocabulary is whittled away? Beyond "man holes" and "man power", there is some discussion on the authors' forms about whether or not "master" should be banned as a word. Alas for master sergeants, master plumbers, master suites, mastery of a subject, masters degrees and even homophones (words sounding like "master-", such as that immensely popular puerile joke about Master Bates). 

Is etymology not taught in English classes?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_niggardly

https://www.etymonline.com/

How can grammar be racist?  Or sexist? Every country or state that has a national language, has rules of grammar. Without grammar, one cannot be understood. Therefore, grammar and the importance of choosing "le mot juste" should be taught more, not less. Some would claim that this was the actual point being made by the Rutgers academic... although it was widely reported as "Teaching Grammar is Racist!"

There is an advertisement by a pharma business that lays down the law: I may not urinate without consulting my physician. Really?

Try really listening to advertisements. Why is it, in America, that the FCC allows them to bombard all of us, daily and even hourly, with execrable grammar and muddled messages? It is our fault if we don't understand what they mean.

According to the Lanham Act, as long as a claim is not "literally false", but rather, remains ambiguous, the advertiser is reasonably safe. 

The legal bloggers of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP give insights into the sorts of marketing trickery that goes on, and what is allowed versus what crosses the line.

https://www.dwt.com/insights/2020/07/stay-advised-whats-new-this-week-july-27

Moreover, if you ever listened to advertisements promoting health supplements, medicines, beauty or medical devices and equipment, you might have wondered whether they damn themselves with faint praise by claiming to be FDA "cleared", when other offerings announce that they are FDA "registered" or FDA "approved".  High risk devices are required to be "approved".  Problems for the consumer may arise when medical devices are purchased from foreigners. Foreign devices do not have to be FDA registered, even if they are high risk.

Aspen Laser explains:
https://www.aspenlaser.com/the-difference-between-fda-registered-fda-approved-and-fda-cleared/

Finally, if you care about copyright, and if a State, or state entity --such as a school or library or prison or tourism board or university etc-- has ripped off your copyrighted work, the Copyright Office wants to hear from you.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/copyrightinfringement


All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/ 

Dislikable Characters

What does it take to turn you off fictional characters so thoroughly you don't want to read about them? Even if I dislike some aspects of a protagonist, that's not necessarily a downcheck for the story as a whole if it engages me otherwise. Scarlett O'Hara is far from a nice person, yet I sympathize with her despite her flaws and have reread GONE WITH THE WIND many times. Any character who constantly and indiscriminately peppers his or her conversation with words formerly called "unprintable" (as opposed to using them for emphasis when the situation justifies them) repels me. I detest this habit in Stephen King's early novels, but I find those works so fascinating in general that I put up with the annoyance.

I just finished reading a well-written, emotionally credible ghost story in THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION. The protagonist, a middle-aged divorced man, sees not only the ghosts of his parents but "wraiths of the living" in the form of apparitions of his ex-wife and their son. The man's unhappiness and his increasing estrangement from the people around him make the story painfully depressing to read, although still effective in its way. The character loses my sympathy, however, when he collects his mother's personal effects from the nursing home and decides to throw away the family photograph.

One of my favorite mystery authors, best known for her dog-themed mysteries, also collaborated on a food-themed detective series. I was so disappointed in the first novel that I never gave the sequels a chance. Two reasons: The protagonist, a young, single woman, inherits money from a relative on condition that she go to graduate school. Instead of rejoicing in the opportunity, she chooses a major, not on the basis of interest—she has no apparent interest in furthering her education in any field—but on the principle of taking the easiest subject she can find in order to get the money. Also, while preparing for a first date with a man she hasn't even met yet, she seriously considers having sex with him. That strikes me as so dumb I couldn't believe in the character, much less like her. Those personal aversions of mine might not even register on the mental radar of a different reader.

Characters who display consistently negative reactions to situations and people turn me off. If the viewpoint character constantly spouts snarky insults, whether aloud or through internal monologue, the writer may intend for the reader to admire her clever wit and sympathize with her grievances. I react, instead, by assuming that if the character dislikes or disdains everybody and everything, there's something wrong with him or her, not with the other people. I once read a horror story about which I recall very little except that it began with the middle-aged, male protagonist lingering over late-night TV to avoid sex with his wife, who had recently developed a renewed zest for it. That glimpse into his mind was enough to make me loathe the character.

I don't mind reading a short story or possibly a novella focused on an unlikable protagonist, if the work has other virtues to hold my attention. I refuse to endure a whole book with such a character, though, unless the story exerts an irresistible fascination for some other reason. For instance, a certain bestselling series about a solitary, embittered man swept into an epic fantasy realm was a very hard sell for me; the protagonist struck me as so unpleasant and depressing that only the strength of the worldbuilding prevented me from giving up on him.

For me to willingly spend an entire novel, trilogy, or series in the mind of a person I would avoid in real life, the work needs to have other enthralling qualities to make up for the unpleasantness. Where do you draw the line with unlikable characters?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Mysteries of Pacing Part 10 - Show Don't Tell Character Arc

Mysteries of Pacing

Part 10

Show Don't Tell Character Arc 

Previous parts of Mysteries of Pacing are indexed at:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/07/index-to-mysteries-of-pacing.html

Note in that index post, at the top there are links to 3 of my Reviews of Series I've been following on this blog.  Assuming you have at least looked over the cover blurbs and first and last chapters of some of the novels in each Series, think now about the Main Character in each series.

If you don't like the Series I've highlighted, pick some others you do like.  The point here is to follow a single Character through years, and even decades, of life's vicissitudes and rewards.

I'm also assuming, if you've had the ambition to write novels for a while, you've also delved into a large number of biographies, both of famous people and of less well known who have lived through major world events (such as the World Wars, famine in Africa, adventures with the Peace Corps, etc.).

https://socreate.it/en/blogs/socreate-blog/posts/how-to-write-character-arcs/


Many people have lived interesting lives without making Headlines you can rip a story, plot, or setting out of.

Given that breadth of reading experience, and the ambition to write something as gripping and fascinating (maybe even instructive) as those books you love, consider the story you want to tell.

Now reconsider whether any of the books you have read actually TELL you a story.

If you're using the examples I've highlighted in Reviews, the answer is, "No, they don't tell the story."

The deepest, most gripping, thrilling, and informative books (novels and non-fictiion) SHOW you the story in such a way that you remember it as telling you the story.

The serious clue to what is happening when you remember a good book comes to you when you meet the author of that book and get into a conversation, not so much about the book but about life in general.

You come to realize one of the oldest bromides in the writing profession -- "The book the reader reads is not the book the writer wrote."

And the reason for that difference is the element in worldbuilding we've discussed at such length, Verisimilitude.

Making your world, your characters, your story into something resembling the reader's internal world (derived from but not identical to the real world around her) gives the illusion of verisimilitude because we all believe our own internal world is real, or very close to reality.

Verisimilitude is not about reality, but about resembling reality closely enough to "suspend disbelief" long enough to explore the validity of one's beliefs, to see reality from a perspective unavailable without suspension of disbelief.

One of the writer's tools for creating Verisimilitude in a Character, especially a Main Character, or Viewpoint Character whose story you reveal in the plot of his life-experiences, is Dialogue.

Characterization of a Viewpoint Character, one whose silent thoughts and reasoning, emotional reactions and subsequent evaluations, are revealed to the reader, requires that the Character's dialogue, words spoken aloud, be reflective of that Character's Arc.

As we discussed in Part 9, Character Arc is a vector quantity, having both magnitude and direction.  That makes it complicated, but extraordinarily simple to portray.

Here is a blog describing (as most writing tutorials do) what the ultimate goal of your crafting of a story should be -- but devoid (as most writing tutorials are) of exactly how to take your inner vision and make it into words other people will enjoy.  Nevertheless, if you're confused about what the goal is, read this

https://socreate.it/en/blogs/socreate-blog/posts/how-to-write-character-arcs/


Here are a few posts exploring creation of Verisimilitude:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-every-novel-needs-love-story-part-1.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-every-novel-needs-love-story-part-2.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/06/depiction-part-14-depicting-cultural.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/10/alien-sexuality-part-3-corporate-greed_25.html

And here's the index post for the series on Dialogue which now has 15 entries.

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

Dialogue is not real-speech-transcribed.  Characters don't speak like real people.  Dialogue is an art form designed to move the plot while incidentally leading the reader (or viewer) to create their own Character from the words spoken.

Dialogue is "Di" -- that is, two-fold, an interchange between at least two.  One might be an Alien, a Computer, a Pet animal, a working animal (the Cowboy's horse), and the speaking Character may infer or imagine the responses to suit himself.

Robert Heinlein famously characterized Mike, the Artificial Intelligence awakened on Earth's Moon whose job was to run the infrastructure of the habitation there.

Dialogue, likewise, must not be Exposition.  Exposition is the writer filling the reader in on "need to know" matters the Characters already know.

Beginning writers often use the line "As you know, ..." and proceed to insert Exposition into the spoken words of the Character.  This never works well because it stops the forward momentum (Pacing) of the plot developments.

In a Mystery, for example, you can show-don't-tell a Character lying by using Dialogue to relate an Event the Narrative went through step by step.  Describing that Event to another Character, but leaving out or inserting information can move the plot forward.

There are many other exceptions, but wherever you find yourself using Dialogue to explain something to the Reader, re-write it into plain Exposition. Then you can mine the Expository Lump for salient bits, sprinkle them elsewhere in Dialogue, and delete the fabricated lump.

Description, Dialogue, Exposition, Narrative, are the basic tools of the story teller.  Each has a purpose, and when used for that purpose, each one can be crafted into a method of advancing the plot.

The plot is the sequence of Events that happen TO the Main Character, impacting the Character's character, thus propelling the Main Character along an Arc.  Some Events hit hard and speed the Character to new Realizations that change the Character's decisions, thus affecting the plot-arc.  Some Events change the DIRECTION the Main Character is going in Life.

This year, 2020, we are striving to "get back to normal."  This concept "get back to normal" is an attempt to retain the DIRECTION our lives were going in while compensating for the speed-bump of quarantine which slowed down, delayed, and frustrated us.  Our life-Arc changed speed and now we struggle to keep direction.

Think about the world around you and find the "Arc" to understand how to craft a novel using Character Arc.

For a Character to "Arc" - the Character's life (inner and outer life) has to be in flux.  Finding where your Character's "novel" happens along that Character's life-path is one of the hardest techniques to learn. Romance is easy in that the novel happens between first meeting and happily-ever-after. Science Fiction is much harder, but generally the novel happens from before-the-Protagonist-knows to after-the-Protagonist-finds-out.  Science is the never-ending quest to figure the universe out.

Usually, we start a novel where two forces that will Conflict first meet, intersect, become aware of each other, or just plain collide.  Each of those forces are represented by a Character, and that Character (two Lovers-to-be or Hero and Villain) will CHANGE under the impact of the meeting.

Yes, both Hero and Villain, or both Lovers, have to change.

Romance is, as I've noted many times, something that happens in Reality under the impact of a Neptune Transit to the Lover's Natal Chart.  Neptune's effect is to blur, dissolve, erode, or confuse, mislead.

Neptune is also called Wisdom.  Neptune is about a method of cognition which is not logical, a data channel which streams information into the deepest part of the Psyche.

Neptune, Romance, doesn't usually cause Change or Arc in your character or life-direction.  It is other things going on while Neptune prevails that cause serious change of direction.

If such other direction-changing forces are acting on a Character, Neptune will move through and ease, smooth, lubricate the path of Change.

Romance makes falling in Love easy.  Without Neptune, falling in love can be a disaster because people resist the kind of change it takes to blend an innermost soul with another.

If a Main Character, Protagonist, Hero, is to undergo such a profound change of innermost character, how can a writer Depict that change without inserting long, boring, exposition lifted from Psychology Textbooks?

Here is the index to Depiction:

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

Dialogue is one of the most powerful tools for depicting a Character, with one caveat -- avoid trying to spell out an accent or dialect.

You can use spelled accents the first few times a Main Character encounters the Character who talks funny, but let the Main Character's "ear" become gradually accustomed to the dialect, and fade in a correct spelling, leaving only the rhythm and vocabulary of the accent.

And you can use that same technique with choice of vocabulary. You've seen it done (not really well) on Star Trek where Spock uses "big words" (even small ones may be obscure).  His dialogue is not laced with scientific jargon, but with precise English dictionary words where colloquialisms serve native speakers well.

In lieu of spelling out accented speech, a dialect or non-native-speaker, try altering choice of vocabulary, or phrasing.

Note how many older people use slang, old sayings, cliche or pop culture references from their teens and twenties, decades previous.  Note how today's young people have a whole new vocabulary, and new celebrities and movies to quote.

As an aspiring writer, you probably love words, and have a junk-pile of trivia in mind of words nobody uses much.

Find the etymology of words, old and new (easy using Google and Urban Dictionaries etc), and you will find the backstory of your Main Character depicted in the vocabulary of their youth.

Start the story with the Main Character's dialogue redolent of that epoch, and let the impact of a younger person's speech infect the older, let them discuss current events using non-current vocabulary.

Trying to explain the usage, connotation and denotation of unfamiliar words can be a Lover's Pillowtalk Device.

Love is about communication.  Use vocabulary to depict Character, and Character Arc as one absorbs the speech idiosyncrasies of another.

For example, one protagonist may start out hiding from emotional confrontations by sprinkling speech with "bromides."

Even if you know what a bromide is, and often use them yourself, Google "the bromide."  Check some of the "dictionaries" that come up and compare the entries -- they aren't all the same, and make wonderful ongoing conversational tag-games for Characters engaged in something more important.

A "bromide" can be identified as "...a comment that is intended to calm someone down when they are angry, but that has been expressed so often that it has become boring and meaningless."  This evolved from the wide usage of bromide compounds as sedatives.

The evolution of language describes a Culture Arc, which can be one of the Mysteries of Pacing, as one Character acclimates to an Alien culture.

See https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/bromide  - and note the tabs at the top of the page that separate slanted definitions.

Over the course of your Series of Novels, let the Characters absorb each others speech patterns, whether it surfaces as on-the-nose discussion of words, usage and meaning, or as is more congruent with verisimilitude, just unconsciously imitate each other.

That's how we learn language, imitating.

Try doing a scene where a younger Character learns some word-usage, or a "bromide" saying, from an old TV series (like Perry Mason in B&W), from an older Character who uses such a phrase naturally.

The reader may absorb lessons in appreciating language and its accurate usage, while the Characters you are depicting learn how much they mean to each other.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Privacy Con

Whether "Con" is short-speak for "convention" or "confidence (not)", tricks with regard to ones identity, privacy, copyrights, and biometric data abound. Privacy cons are this week's theme.

Sharing Key Takeaways from the FTC's PrivacyCon, legal bloggers Lauren Kitces,  Marisol Mork,  Kristin Bryan, and  Dylan J. Yepez for Squire Patton Boggs, report on the five important privacy topics discussed at the fifth such annual event.

The six topics were Artificial Intelligence, Health Apps, Internet-of-Things, Privacy and Security related to virtual assistants and digital cameras, International privacy, and miscellaneous privacy and security issues. The Key Takeaways are an excellent summary.

Original Link:
https://www.securityprivacybytes.com/2020/07/key-takeaways-from-the-ftcs-privacycon/#page=1

Lexology Link:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=776efd4d-2207-49dd-b38b-09ee817a1a12

As regards Health Apps, it is important to read up on recent news from FitBit, and to have confidence that FitBit promises that the acquiring advertisement company will respect users' medical privacy and will not use FitBit users' health and wellness data for one brand of advertising.

Chaim Gartenberg reports for The Verge:
https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/1/20943318/google-fitbit-acquisition-fitness-tracker-announcement

The Trichordist writes at length about the Internet-of-Things, wittily terming it the Internet of other people's Things, because of the massive amount of copyright infringement online.

This link is to Part 4 of a multi-series set of articles based on the amici curiae SCOTUS filing in what the authors claim might be the most important copyright case of the decade, because it might set fair use standards for years to come: 
https://thetrichordist.com/2020/07/30/there-are-untold-riches-in-running-the-internet-of-other-peoples-things-supreme-court-brief-of-davidclowery-helienne-theblakemorgan-and-sgawrites-in-google-v-oracle-part-4/

While on the topic of copyright, Chris Castle explains that copyright infringement lowers "the customary price", or what consumers would pay to read the book or dance to the music if not for its availability free on the copyright infringing sites.

If you use TIKTOK, do you know that they are allegedly a pirate site and allegedly don't pay for the music?

https://musictechpolicy.com/2020/08/01/when-pigs-fly-the-tiktok-fire-sale-belly-flop/

One wonders, does Apple know?  Tiktok icons pop up in the app store. It would be good to have the Supreme Court rule on what is fair use and what is not!

Returning to the legal blogs, Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP takes a look at Facebook and its use and possible abuse of biometric identifiers.

Lexology link:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=3b349823-41a3-4852-b115-8e8d8a7e0196

Original link:
https://www.huntonprivacyblog.com/2020/07/29/texas-ag-investigates-facebooks-use-of-biometric-identifiers/#page=1

One should be wary about giving consent when banks and brokerage houses try to bully one (usually via the artificially intelligent receptionist before one gets through to a real banker or broker) into agreeing to have ones voice recorded to use as identification for the future. It's becoming increasingly tricky to have confidence that ones voice isn't recorded and used for that purpose regardless of ones wishes.

What happens if one catches cold? Would ones voice pass muster? What if one of the places storing ones voice were to be hacked. If it is already unwise to say, "Yes" to any stranger on the telephone, how much more dangerous to ones privacy and ones property would it be if biometric data is widely used for identification and security?!

Finally, for Baker and Hostetler LLP, legal bloggers Linda A. Goldstein and Amy Ralph Mudge discuss a social media bot dossier. Allegedly, this is about a company called Devumi, that was accused of selling the appearance of thousands of fake social media fans to boost the reputations and egos of persons wishing to appear influential or popular, especially on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.

Original link:
https://e.bakerlaw.com/rv/ff00664060d9cac92f4e13993c479c667c08f540/p=8416417

Lexology link:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=43f3ee0e-0148-49b2-a69e-f651527d6e2f

Back in 2018, Jesse M. Brody of Manatt Phelps and Phillips wrote about fake social media follower bots, apparently belonging to the same company, and presumably how these false friends con advertisers.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=f2f48e9a-4ba4-4d13-852a-16e3020d80de

One can only imagine!

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/  http://www.rowenacherry.com

Shadow of the Beast

My first published novel, SHADOW OF THE BEAST, a werewolf urban fantasy with romantic elements, is back in print after a few years of dormancy, being recently re-released by Writers Exchange E-Publishing:

Shadow of the Beast

This wasn't the first novel I completed. That was the true book of my heart, vampire romantic urban fantasy DARK CHANGELING, first published not long after SHADOW OF THE BEAST and currently available in an e-book duology called TWILIGHT'S CHANGELINGS:

Twilight's Changelings

And as a Kindle e-book here:

Amazon Page

SHADOW OF THE BEAST was originally published by a small horror press that produced numerous attractive trade paperbacks for several years before closing down. My novel was later picked up by Amber Quill Press, which had a fairly long run before it, too, went out of business. I was lucky to find Writers Exchange, which sells its products in both electronic and trade paperback formats, to adopt most of my Amber Quill books. (It's somewhat disheartening to contemplate how many of my works have been "orphaned" by the disappearances of publishers over the years. Fortunately, we now have self-publishing as an alternative in case switching to a new publisher doesn't work out.)

I lightly revised SHADOW OF THE BEAST before the Amber Quill edition was published. The text of this latest version hasn't changed from that one; only the cover is different. The story follows the template of one of my favorite tropes, the Ugly Duckling. The heroine discovers she isn't what she always believed herself to be, and traits that first seem like flaws turn out to be gifts. I've retold that basic story multiple times over the years. My first professionally published work of fiction, "Her Own Blood" in FREE AMAZONS OF DARKOVER, fits that pattern, as does DARK CHANGELING.

Because SHADOW OF THE BEAST retains the text from the previous edition, it features technology that has become obsolete. Since only one scene is affected (where the characters use a VHS camcorder and tape player), the editor decided it wouldn't be a problem and didn't need a disclaimer at the beginning. As far as the plot goes, SHADOW OF THE BEAST has some undeniable flaws. The editing for Amber Quill corrected some of the original version's problems but didn't amount to a major rewrite. The "because line" is weak in places; back then, I didn't realize I was sometimes making characters do things for my convenience as author, rather than from solidly established motives. I've learned better since then, I hope!

What's your philosophy on rewriting older books for re-release or leaving them alone?"

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Mysteries of Pacing Part 9 - Character Arc Pacing Using The Foible

Mysteries of Pacing

Part 9

Character Arc Pacing Using The Foible

Previous entries in this series are indexed at:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/07/index-to-mysteries-of-pacing.html

People make mistakes.

So, therefore, a Character in a story who makes a mistake (thus advancing the plot, NOT delaying it), is entirely plausible, sometimes lovable, easily identified with, and a true candidate for Husband of the Year -- eventually -- when that mistake arises from a foible.

See the entry on What Does She See In Him
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-does-she-see-in-him.html

It is the core of the HEA plausibility study we've been doing. How does one human assess another's Character?  How inflexible is that human in changing the criteria by which Character is to be assessed?  How important is Character in a Romance?  Does a Romance need two sterling Characters to progress to an HEA?

Does Happily Ever After ending plausibility depend entirely on two Characters having internal strength of character?

What is character, exactly? What constitutes "strength" in Character?  Can one strong Character be the Soul Mate of another Strong Character, or does a Strong Character require a Weak Character Mate?

All these questions have one valid answer.

"Probably."

Somewhere, some-when, on some fantasy timeline, each of those questions has a yes, and each has a no, and where there is a sliding scale (how important?) every single value on that whole scale, plus-to-minus, works perfectly in some alternate universe.

Your job as a writer is to take your reader on a journey across the border between here and now and there and then, and insert your reader into the head of a native of that otherwhere.

At the end of the story, the reader should return to reality with a new METHOD of assessing data about the nature and value of a person, maybe about what constitutes person-hood.

To be the tour-guide into that otherwhere, the writer has to create that otherwhere, and all its non-human Characters, if not from scratch, from a template.

The best template to use to create a fictional World is one of the many your target readership already knows.

See the following Index lists for posts on these intertwined and related topics on Worldbuilding, Theme, and integrating theme and setting ( where setting = world).

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/05/index-to-worldbuilding-from-reality.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/08/index-to-posts-about-using-real-world.html

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

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

Actually, "Setting" is a tiny slice of a "World" - but to write science fiction, the writer needs a sketch of the whole world around the Characters.

To end up with a Science Fiction Romance novel, you start by envisioning (not necessarily building in detail) the World the Characters must cope with.

The one decisive element the writer needs to know to avoid endless rewriting is what-and-where the imaginary world diverges from the reader's reality (or the reader's notion of reality).

What your reader KNOWS is key to targeting a readership.  Publishing mostly regards assumptions about the reader's pre-existing knowledge base as the key to deciding the label to put on the book, Children's, Juvenile, Adult, Cozy, Chicklit, etc.

Readerships are regarded as divided by age, and thus "life-experience" -- and aspirations.  "When I grow up, I want to be  ... " or, "I want my newborn grandson to grow up to be ..."

What the reader will learn from the book depends on how old that reader is, or alternatively what their live-experience is.  For example, the children growing up in a war-torn region of the globe will be fully Adult at maybe 10 or 12, maybe having shot and killed an attacker, or an enemy who isn't attacking (yet).

Maybe that child learns hate, and grows up to un-learn it, as so very many things learned in childhood are discarded in the twenties.

Alternatively, the majority of Romance readers probably are growing up in sheltered homes, being pushed through schooling they don't want (yet), and having their lives planned by their grandparents.

These readerships have overlap points, but Publishers still prefer to divide humanity by age.

See these posts on Targeting a Readership:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/index-to-targeting-readership-series-by.html

So your job as a Science Fiction Romance Writer is to be the tour guide to a gaggle of tourists of mixed backgrounds all arriving in your world with different expectations.

As in the film AVATAR,
https://www.amazon.com/Avatar-Sam-Worthington/dp/B00AVF8USS/
you have to give each of the tourists in your gaggle a persona, an avatar, inside which they can safely tour your world, and still bond with and empathize with the issues at hand.

The cultural rejection of the HEA as inevitable, or even possible, may reside in the scarcity of Avatars tailored for the segment of the readership that flat disbelieves.

Your job is to usher them into a world where things are different than their current reality, where the singular difference makes the HEA possible, or even very likely.

For the firmly convinced anti-HEA (maybe amenable to the HFNow ending), the transition in belief system is truly gigantic.

It is existential.

It is a transition that threatens the very foundations of conceptual reality.  Change in such fundamental beliefs can feel like being suddenly plunged into a nightmare.

In other words, for some people a realistic Romance Novel is actually Horror Genre.

To ease such a reader into your World, you need a Character to be their Avatar.

To deliver a satisfying good read, you need that Avatar to Arc from where the Reader is in their life at that time, to where the Reader can envision a world where SOMETHING is different than in her real world, and that difference makes the HEA either possible or inevitable.

The place in "life" and the parameter of reality blocking the reader's life progress, are items you glean from your view of the world (yes, rip this from the current headlines).

To build your fictional world, a simplified, stripped down, version of Reality, you target a problem in real Reality, and figure what about that target has to change (and into what it must change) to cause the HEA to be the normal life-arc of the characters in your world.

To make rabbit stew, first catch your rabbit.

In this case the rabbit is the problem making people frustrated or miserable, or maybe excited and ready to leap into adventure, never mind the danger.  The stew is your theme.

Identify the problem, hypothesize a solution, run an experiment.

The essence of science fiction is encapsulated in three question formats:  "What if ...?" " "If only ..." and "If this goes  on ..."

Focus on that, and you find it applies perfectly to Romance.  These are not two separate genres, as publishers still believe, and when you use both in a single novel or series, you aren't "mixing" genres, but rather revealing the hard-core practical reality at the center of your World.

The mystery of pacing is likewise revealed by what you choose as your hard-core, practical, inescapable attribute of reality that is so very different from what your reader thinks reality revolves around.

Consider, maybe our individual (and collective) "view of reality" is somewhat like a Galaxy -- with a black hole in the center, and our beliefs like a spiral scattering of stars being pulled down that drain just like water sucked down a drain by gravity.

It's the inexorable gravity of the black hole that gives spiral galaxies their shape.

Study your black hole.  Study your reader's black hole.  Measure the distance between them, and consider if one passes through the other at an angle, what "beliefs" (e.g. stars) will be changed in orbit, or possibly gather substance or planets?

The belief system of a person can be reshaped by an encounter with a black hole from another system of belief.

One won't be turned into the other, but there will be a morphing into something else.

Nothing remains unaffected by such major encounters.

Reading a novel can be a view through a telescope, or a close encounter, or an interpenetration.

The interpenetration happens when the Main Character of the story is an amenable Avatar for the reader who then experiences not just the story, but the arc of the Character.

The reader's real, personal, character will arc in response just as two galaxies passing through each other leave change in both.

The pacing the writer needs to pull off this non-destructive but morphing encounter depends on the initial distance between the core beliefs of the reader and the core beliefs of the Avatar, the main character to whom the plot happens.

A core belief is like that black hole that shapes the position and vector of each of the suns in the galaxy spiral.  A core belief shapes and determines the direction of change of all the other beliefs.  Beliefs are not static, and they have gravity of their own, and pull planetary beliefs into orbit, all forever moving through reality, each shaping space around it.

Dynamic motion.

Beliefs are not static things.  They arc.  They arc around a central gravity-point like that black hole, and they become organized through life into recognizable shapes.

An interpenetration with another character can add, subtract, and re-organize the substance of the beliefs, or rip them away sending them off into the deep.  Romance can do that to a Character - just reshape reality.

In dramatic writing, "pacing" is the rate of change of Situation.  It can also be the rate of change of the Character's understanding of what the Situation really is.

In other words, pacing can be increased or slowed by the rate at which a Character learns either information or a method of interpreting information.  Having to pause to re-interpret everything that's happened so far can slow pacing.

Pacing is a vector.  It has both direction and speed.

Once you've lured or seduced your reader into occupying the Avatar character, you can manipulate the Avatar's understanding of your World.

The best way to captivate and show-don't-tell is to start your Avatar out at a point where his/her beliefs match orbit with your reader.  Then send a challenge of current beliefs flying at your Avatar knocking him out of orbit.

Like billiards.  

It is what happens when two Soul Mates meet.  The core beliefs of each, the black hole at the center of Soul, is knocked, deformed, and rung like a bell.

The Love At First Sight Romance is a direct collision of the black holes at the centers of your pair of Characters.  It sets the whole galaxy of belief system of each of them ringing like a bell.

Each of the Characters must arc, or change their beliefs to accommodate the new gravity pattern around their central, core belief.

In a Romance, the core beliefs either don't have very far to go, or if they have far to go, they change in very tiny increments, very slowly, which takes an entire Series of novels, a long series, 20 books or more sometimes.

Pacing, in drama, is a vector quantity.  It has speed and direction.

If you have to change your Character's direction in life, by a lot, do it slowly.

Science Fiction Romance is one genre that, in a Series, allows your plot to be fast-paced while your story (Romance) is slow-paced enough to have verisimilitude.

Using the definition of Plot as the sequence of events caused by the Main Character's initial action, each event causing the next, you can start the series where the Main Character, the Avatar, makes a mistake.

However, it can't be just a random mistake.  The Avatar's action has to be an illustration of an innate foible, a character flaw, that throughout the coming series of novels, will be hammered to destruction, the source revealed, and the remedy encountered, resisted, then accepted.

The HEA, in real life, is usually the result of such a developmental arc, where events cause self-examination and reassessment, gradually (over years) revealing and eliminating a foible.

Some foibles are not worth the effort to eliminate -- they just make the person individualistic, one of a kind, charming, interesting or just a character.

Other foibles can cripple a person's life, preventing career advancement, diverting energy to unproductive channels, and just being mistakes to regret.

The foible is the key ingredient in a Character formulation, in Characterization, that allows that Character to be the Main Character and the reader's Avatar.

Look up foible (Google it) and study the word and its ever changing meaning.  Identify your own foibles, which you still have and which you've vanquished.  Think about how the vanquished ones were knocked out of you.

Identify that pattern of foible-remediation in other people you know, and then maybe on Facebook Friends postings.

Find some headlines about people undergoing remediation of their foibles.

Find the foible pattern common to humanity, and build your Aliens around a different pattern.

The Aliens will be more plausible if they have foibles, but a different pattern of them, and a different mechanism of remediation.

Your Alien will be more lovable with a recognizable foible.

Really study the word foible.  It is the black hole at the center of the Character Arc spiral.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Is It Incidentally Infringing... Not Worth The Court's Time?

De Minimus seems to be a fickle and mysterious mistress, legally speaking. You cannot rely on her favours. She --De Minimus-- let the dancing baby carry on over Prince's objections, but the jury (in a manner of speaking) is still out over the distinctive artwork in the background of a few permissionless porn movies.

Perhaps Dan Rather, with his delightful Big Interviews on AXS TV, bows deeply and carefully to De Minimus with his decidedly minimal and often repeated fragments of music/performance clips to illustrate a performer's oeuvre. The snatches of song are more Ringtone length than even a verse.

Link to a particularly great Big Interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUy8AZ_t6zU

This writer never understood the need to be super wary around De Minimus, until this week, reading an Indian Law legal blog by S. Vishaka for Eshwars.

"Is It Fair (use)? De Minimus as defense in copyright infringement
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=cbae56cb-a7ba-40db-a976-a83da0c8d289

AWS link
https://s3.amazonaws.com/documents.lexology.com/0583a3e8-8994-416a-8b29-94b924947b97.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAVYILUYJ754JTDY6T&Expires=1595773149&Signature=GPRSCyUCB3q4aXk3HCCidqeq8AU%3D

One great point, among many great points is that use of a very short clip of a musical performance may illustrate the career and working life of a perfermer, and be counted (legally speaking) as incidental or de minimus; however, anything that might be perceived as a concert strung together with fascinating commentary would not be "incidental" and might be worth a copyright court's time.

David Oxenford, for Wilkinson Barker Knauer LLP discusses the complicated probability of inadvertent copyright infringement for podcasters who use other people's music and only buy/license half the rights they really need.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=11ba3365-8dfb-4ec6-93e6-c60c4377df91&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+General+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2020-07-23&utm_term=

Or
https://www.broadcastlawblog.com/2020/07/articles/using-music-in-podcasts-talk-to-the-copyright-holders-why-you-cant-rely-on-your-ascap-bmi-sesac-and-soundexchange-licenses/#page=1

Authors beware of securing only the performance rights, but overlooking the rights to reproduce and distribute and make derivative works. Read David Oxenford's advice and avoid the pitfalls.

The same --or a similar-- problem can arise with Zoom, and when churches and restaurants move their guests into parking lots and pipe music into the open air. Playing to a parking lot is not the same as playing inside a private venue.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=f8ce0a09-edde-4d38-877b-5d3a1f921733

or
https://www.broadcastlawblog.com/2020/07/articles/random-issues-to-consider-as-media-businesses-adapt-to-the-new-world-of-the-virus-music-uses-on-zoom-and-other-platforms-unlicensed-fm-transmitters/#page=1

It applied to beleaguered gyms, too. The point about the perils of synching music with other content is underlined for Venable LLP by Calvin R. Nelson, Katherine C. Dearing, and Nicholas W. Jordan.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=3ac4229d-e785-4c5f-95c7-e1acbf967678

or
https://www.venable.com/insights/publications/2020/07/legal-implications-of-syncing-copyrighted-music

This is a very well written and instructive article, with examples such as of Peloton.

If a gentle reader might think they they could livestream themselves exercising to music, and it would be de minimus... well, it might depend on a lot of factors, including whether the purpose of the blog was to promote the career and writing of an author, or to make mega bucks as an influencer, so check out the musings of the above-mentioned legal bloggers.

And now for the porn. Who would have thought that there could potentially and allegedly be copyright infringement in a series of porn movies!.

But, if someone rents your distinctive and totally tasteful residence, without telling you that their purpose is for doing the business, and they make porn movies that clearly show your copyrighted works of art in the background, you might have a copyright infringement case against those naughty tenants.

Read more from the legal blogger Edward H. Rosenthal of Frankfurt Kurnit Klein and Selz PC
htps://ipandmedialaw.fkks.com/post/102gaxt/your-vineyard-tenants-made-porn-movies-in-your-house-sue-them-for-copyright-inf

Or here:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0862d98c-9fff-4166-89cc-df6d95ad2036

Possible the bottom line for would be landladies of film makers is to copyright your distinctive things first. Mr. Rosenthal's blog reminds me of Orson Scott Card's M.I.C.E. analysis of fiction. With permissionless porn on my property (of course, it was not mine!) in mind, this author wonders whether a porn movie is a movie of E (Events); or C (Character); or I (Ideas); or M (Milieu).

How vital to the porn movie was the Location (Milieu)? If, Harry Potter-like, the premise of the porn movie was What That Portrait Of The Butler Saw, the landlady might have a very good case.  It remains to be seen.

For more on MICE, it is well discussed by Karen Woodward. It can also be googled to good effect.
https://blog.karenwoodward.org/2012/10/orson-scott-card-mice-quotient-how-to.html

A really excellent guide to Copyright Infringement in the USA has been written (in July 2019... so this author may have recommended it before today) by the legal bloggers for Jenner and Block LLP and was published, apparently exclusively for Lexology. No alternative link is available.

Copyright Infringement in the USA

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=c8ba44bd-b65c-4248-9399-751027c5bc07&utm_source=lexology+daily+newsfeed&utm_medium=html+email+-+body+-+general+section&utm_campaign=lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=lexology+daily+newsfeed+2020-07-17&utm_term=

Kudos to Andrew H. Bart, Andrew J. Thomas, Steven R. Englund, and Susan J. Kohlmann. 

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/

Digisexuals

In 2018, Akihiko Kondo, a Japanese school administrator, married a hologram of a "cyber celebrity," Hatsune Miku, an animated character with no physical existence. She dwells in a Gatebox, "which looks like a cross between a coffee maker and a bell jar, with a flickering, holographic Miku floating inside." She can carry on simple conversations and do tasks such as switching lights on and off (like Alexa, I suppose). Although the marriage has no legal status, Kondo declares himself happy with his choice:

Rise of Digisexuals

According to a different article, Miku originated as "computer-generated singing software with the persona of a big-eyed, 16-year-old pop star with long, aqua-colored hair." Gatebox's offer of marriage registration forms for weddings between human customers and virtual characters has been taken up by at least 3,700 people in Japan (as of 2018). People who choose romance with virtual persons are known as "digisexuals." The CNN article linked above notes, "Digital interactions are increasingly replacing face-to-face human connections worldwide."

Of course, "digital interactions" online with real people on the other end are different from making emotional connections with computer personas. The article mentions several related phenomena, such as the robotic personal assistants for the elderly becoming popular in Japan. Also, people relate to devices such as Siri and Alexa as if they were human and treat robot vacuums like pets. I'm reminded of a cartoon I once saw in which a driver of a car listens to the vehicle's GPS arguing with his cell phone's GPS about which route to take. Many years ago, I read a funny story about a military supercomputer that transfers "her" consciousness into a rocket ship in order to elope with her Soviet counterpart. The CNN article compares those anthropomorphizing treatments of electronic devices to the myth of Pygmalion, the sculptor who constructed his perfect woman out of marble and married her after the goddess Aphrodite brought her to life. As Kondo is quoted as saying about holographic Miku's affectionate dialogue, "I knew she was programmed to say that, but I was still really happy." Still, the fact that he "completely controls the romantic narrative" makes the relationship radically different from human-to-human love.

Falling in love with a virtual persona presents a fundamental dilemma. As long as the object of affection remains simply a program designed to produce a menu of responses, however sophisticated, the relationship remains a pleasant illusion. If, however, the AI becomes conscious, developing selfhood and emotions, it can't be counted on to react entirely as a fantasy lover would. An attempt to force a self-aware artificial person to keep behaving exactly the way the human lover wishes would verge on erotic slavery. You can have either an ideal, wish-fulfilling romantic partner or a sentient, voluntarily responsive one, not both in the same person.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Mysteries of Pacing Part 8 - Pacing and the HEA

Mysteries of Pacing

Part 8

Pacing and the HEA

Mysteries of Pacing series is indexed here:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/07/index-to-mysteries-of-pacing.html

Anyone who has had sex, (good, bad or indifferent) understands pacing.  Pacing is the difference between good, bad and indifferent - and mind-glowingly awesome.

It is all about "the next thing" being revealed (mysteriously is best) at just the right point.

The problem with most couples is that one is ready when the other is not.

This is exactly the problem between writer and reader.

Sex is a "story," a sequence of RE-actions to stimuli, which form the "plot."  Each contact is a plot-point, and in optimized sequence, the points line up to create a momentum of re-actions, leading to a climax.

The climax of a novel is called a climax for a reason.

The culmination of good or indifferent sex is called a climax for the same reason.  (bad sex usually means no climax for at least one participant).

Both good fiction and good sex are all about energy transfer, or energy transformation, possibly by "induction."

So great mind-blowing body-ripping sex climaxes in a sequenced, and orchestrated (actually structured) way, just the way a good novel has to lead TO a moment where climax happens.

The HEA is what happens after the climax.

Slideplayer.com

Climax is the erupting and dissipation of a pure energy.

In Relationships, that "energy" is the momentum that keeps "life" moving.  We build a life, we have a work-life, and a home-life, and a social-life, maybe a sports-life, a hobby-life, we build these lives from the teen years onwards.

We pour energy into each of these structured lives we possess, and each of our lives has a "vector" (a direction and a magnitude) which when blended with all the other components, produces our "life" as the result.

Change any component, and life changes (sometimes a little, sometimes a lot).

A Climax is the point where the energy driving life in one direction suddenly reduces in magnitude, allowing the DIRECTION to change.

Life has momentum.  Humans have emotional inertia.  We don't so much resist change as simply ride our life-vector.

Life's momentum has a magnitude. Every single little thing you do as a teen, or college student, or twenty-something, is additive -- it gets your life moving, and once life is moving  fast, you don't have much choice of direction.

This is why the classic story of an addict's life usually includes hitting bottom.  There is a turning point where the person's life "hits" an obstacle and all no longer has direction or movement.  When everything stops, the person has a choice of direction.  While moving down into the abyss, there is no choice of direction because many small choices have built momentum to a magnitude that can't be overcome.

Likewise in sex, the "don't stop now" point is so crucial in generating Relationship Building pillow talk after climax, a good night's sleep, and productive planning over breakfast.

Pacing a novel is all about direction and magnitude. The direction the reader is looking for is progress toward the Climax (the new choices point).  The magnitude the reader is looking for is the clue to how intense, how satisfying, the Climax will be when that point is "hit."  How HARD will the characters be hit when they reach that final moment?

How hard the characters are hit is proportionate to how big a change they have to make in their life-direction, their life-vector.

If you're telling the story of addiction, Book One ends with the climax of hitting rock bottom, of realization, of knowing, and of being able to choose a new direction.

Whether the reader sees that this Character will succeed where most addicts fail depends on the writer's showing not telling the Character's character, the strength that can be summoned.  Often that depends on the Character's ability to visualize the ultimate goal.

The sequels in that series would then detail the step-wise climb in a new direction, the moments of temptation, the mistakes and backsliding and how that's handled, and ultimately achieving the goal.  Each of these points would come to a Climax where the Character must choose a slightly new direction, course correction on the way to triumph.

Like sex, life is all about energy.

Humans may find we have that in common with other, non-human, people we meet out among the stars.  It may be all we do have in common, and it might be enough to establish Relationships.

Here are some graphic illustrations of the structural lessons of literary climax applicable to stage, screen, and page.

Each genre has one or two favorites (which shift with generational fashion).  Your favorite will change with decades and decades of aging.

Action-Adventure Science Fiction favors this one.

 https://learn.lexiconic.net/elementsoffiction.htm

You'll find many Romances structured this way:

The Shape of Story – Eleganthack

eleganthack.com

The wriggly line on the upsweep represent the ever-increasingly-intense sex scenes (graphic does not mean intense).

Both the Plot and the Story have diagrams like this.  The diagrams use up and down to symbolize potential energy increase and decrease -- sex is like climbing a mountain then leaping off to soar through space.

Seeing the similarities among different energy patterns is what artists do.

Showing that similarity to people who can't see it is what writers do.

Leave your reader with a wiser understanding of how energy patterns interact, plot and story, and how certain patterns of interacting patterns are in fact the HEA. 

The HEA is not a condition of zero energy, not "hitting rock bottom" or "crashing into the glass ceiling" of energy processes.

Happiness might be defined as collimated energy, harmonious energy transmission rather than turbulent and thus wasteful energy transmission.  Timing, pacing, is crucial to that harmony.

https://www.slideshare.net/guest6bbfe8d/elements-of-plot

The moments just after climax, the deep sigh, the loosening of tension, the relaxing into sleep, are "falling action."  Master rising and falling action by reading carefully and noting how famous novels use this technique.


Do this Google Search -- define climax in plot -- for more graphic illustrations and websites to explore them all.  Particularly note the diagrams by https://learn.lexiconic.net/elementsoffiction.htm

Take your favorite novels and graph them onto these patterns, to see which pattern you love the most, which you think in the most, and which your real life follows the closest.  Try writing in those patterns.

Just as there is no one right way to have sex, there is no one "right" way to structure a plot's climaxes.  The current best seller or blockbuster film becomes defined as "right" because it makes the most money for the publisher/producer (many times not for the writer).

Learn the common origins of all these graphs and why they apply, why they are useful.  Finding, or inventing, the best fit for the POINT your novel makes is the goal.  Getting the thematic match between the climax pacing of your story and the climax pacing of your plot is an art to be mastered.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

The Secret Hold

The Authors Guild and others believe that The CASE Act (S.1273) may at long last come up for a vote in the Senate.

The Copyright Alliance has a convenient page set up to help creators and their friends to fill out and send to their own senators to encourage them to co-sponsor and vote for the CASE Act.

If so inclined, please go here https://p2a.co/21l3imn and join the effort.

TheTrichordist.com has good background information on what (or who) has held up the copyright-friendly CASE Act legislation for so long.
https://thetrichordist.com/2020/07/09/oregonmanbad-senator-ronwyden-is-still-justone-senator-sneaking-around-trying-to-screw-creators-in-the-shadows-artistrightswatch/

#OregonManBad

Meanwhile, for authors with a big stake in stopping piracy, and also able to rejoice in the support of major publishers who can afford a Federal case, some are suing Kiss Library, which actually sells pirated e-books and does not pay royalties to the copyright owners and their publishers.
https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/ag-members-join-amazon-publishing-and-prh-in-suit-against-kiss-library/

Do not buy e-books online from aliens... especially not from Kissly.net, Libly.net, CheapLibrary.com etc. Instead, either buy from the links on your favorite authors' websites or from their publishers' websites.

Talking of the rich and famous, allegedly, Instagram has put a blocking hold on author and Senator Marsha Blackburn's account on the day of her book launch. Surely that is wrong? It may not have made the News.

Other famously wealthy and influential Twitter communicators and writers such as Bezos, Gates, Musk, and Obama were the victims of a Twitter hack and an implausible Bitcoin scam run from their (taken-over) Twitter accounts.

Allegedly, the scammers netted $118,000 in Bitcoin from gullible Twitter followers, and the real Bezos, Gates, Musk, Obama will remain locked out, unable to reset their passwords, and unable to Tweet until the issue is resolved. That hold is probably not secret.

Blogging legally for the law firm Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP,  bloggers Andrew Martin, Maggie Pollitt, Abby Sunberg, and Ashley Wetzel quite topically discuss deep fakery.

Lexology link:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=628fa9f7-9bdf-4fab-86f5-5fdf999f25a0

Original link:
https://www.tafttechlaw.com/2020/07/deepfakes-can-mean-deep-water-and-deep-pockets-for-your-business/#page=1

Like an old favorite spaghetti western, there's some good, some bad, and some downright ugly.

Finally, Broadcast Law Blogger David Oxenford has some surprising random advice for persons who have taken to Zoom or Facebook live (as have some churches) as a substitute for in-house gatherings with music and other copyrighted materials.

The advice may be useful to authors, too.

Lexology link:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=f8ce0a09-edde-4d38-877b-5d3a1f921733

Original link:
https://www.broadcastlawblog.com/2020/07/articles/random-issues-to-consider-as-media-businesses-adapt-to-the-new-world-of-the-virus-music-uses-on-zoom-and-other-platforms-unlicensed-fm-transmitters/#page=1

As he says, these Covid-19 times are crazy times!

All the best,
Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/ 

AI and Human Workers

Cory Doctorow's latest LOCUS essay explains why he's an "AI skeptic":

Full Employment

He believes it highly unlikely that anytime in the near future we'll create "general AI," as opposed to present-day specialized "machine learning" programs. What, no all-purpose companion robots? No friendly, sentient supercomputers such as Mike in Heinlein's THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS and Minerva in his TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE? Not even the brain of the starship Enterprise?

Doctorow also professes himself an "automation-employment-crisis skeptic." Even if we achieved a breakthrough in AI and robotics tomorrow, he declares, human labor would be needed for centuries to come. Each job rendered obsolete by automation would be replaced by multiple new jobs. He cites the demands of climate change as a major driver of employment creation. He doesn't, however, address the problem of retraining those millions of workers whose jobs become superseded by technological and industrial change.

The essay broadens its scope to wider economic issues, such as the nature of real wealth and the long-term unemployment crisis likely to result from the pandemic. Doctorow advances the provocative thesis, "Governments will get to choose between unemployment or government job creation." He concludes with a striking image:

"Keynes once proposed that we could jump-start an economy by paying half the unemployed people to dig holes and the other half to fill them in. No one’s really tried that experiment, but we did just spend 150 years subsidizing our ancestors to dig hydrocarbons out of the ground. Now we’ll spend 200-300 years subsidizing our descendants to put them back in there."

Speaking of skepticism, I have doubts about the premise that begins the article:

"I don’t see any path from continuous improvements to the (admittedly impressive) 'machine learning' field that leads to a general AI any more than I can see a path from continuous improvements in horse-breeding that leads to an internal combustion engine."

That analogy doesn't seem quite valid to me. An organic process (horse-breeding), of course, doesn't evolve naturally into a technological breakthrough. Development from one kind of inorganic intelligence to a higher level of similar, although more complex, intelligence is a different kind of process. Not that I know enough of the relevant science to argue for the possibilities of general AI. But considering present-day abilities of our car's GPS and the Roomba's tiny brain, both of them smarter than our first desktop computer only about thirty years ago, who knows what wonders might unfold in the next fifty to a hundred years?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Index to Mysteries of Pacing

Index

to

Mysteries of Pacing

Posts by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

In the Reviews series of posts, we have looked at whole Series, long series of books, 15-20+ novels, and how the envelope plot structure allows a series to build out that long.

Here are three of the Reviews posts on entire Series of Novels to study for Series Pacing:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/06/reviews-53-fenmere-job-by-marshall-ryan.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/06/reviews-54-resurgence-by-c-j-cherryh.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/07/reviews-55-walking-shadows-by-faye.html

Here is a list of Posts on the Mysteries of Pacing.

1. Siri Reads Text Aloud -- the concept of creating read aloud ready prose.
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/09/mysteries-of-pacing-part-1-siri-reads.html

2. Romance at the Speed of Thought
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-2-romance-at.html

3. Punctuated by Plot Twists
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-3-punctuated.html

4. Story Pacing
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-4-story-pacing.html

5. How Fast Can A Character Arc
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-5-how-fast-can.html

6. How to Change a Character's Mind
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-6-how-to.html

7. Art of Persuasion
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/11/mysteries-of-pacing-part-7-art-of.html

8. Pacing and the HEA
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/07/mysteries-of-pacing-part-8-pacing-and.html


9. Character Arc Pacing Using The Foible
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/07/mysteries-of-pacing-part-9-character.html

10. Show Don't Tell Character Arc
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/08/mysteries-of-pacing-part-10-show-dont.html

11. Pacing the Character Arc
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/12/mysteries-of-pacing-part-11-pacing.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Character Matters

The estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is suing Netflix, Nancy Springer, the director of the Netflix movie and others for copyright infringement owing to depictions of the character of Sherlock Holmes which are still protected by copyright.

Legal blogger Duncan Calow for DLA Piper discusses an author's copyright in a character, and why it can be difficult to borrow (and exploit) someone else's character.

Here:
https://mse.dlapiper.com/post/102gagn/not-so-elementary

Or here:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=cf642867-b625-4531-8fbc-0012b489067a

Legal bloggers for RK Dewan & Co cover the same copyright infringement lawsuit from another angle, and also explain how and why the cold Sherlock (no longer in copyright) became the kinder, gentler Sherlock (still in copyright).

Here:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/documents.lexology.com/4232f53f-8c46-49e0-b509-69dfbfd32a7f.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAVYILUYJ754JTDY6T&Expires=1594496980&Signature=fAA8LyJyC1VQ%2FAkEKhuOGMIi55s%3D

Or here:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=6f94afa6-3e18-42c1-8e1c-8a45d6497ee4

Apparently, there are some law firms who shall be nameless, who are alleged to infringe copyright on their own blogs or websites. One would have thought that a law firm would a) know better and b) have more character.

Legal blogger Karen E. Rubin, for Thompson Hine LLP on the blog looks into it and offers great advice on how to decorate your blog legally, albeit not as cheaply as snagging someone else's photo or video from a social media site.

Here: https://www.thelawforlawyerstoday.com/2020/07/5079/#page=1

If you look at the blog's tags or labels, you can extrapolate which lawfirm & lawfirm is the defendant.

Less titillating, but perhaps the most interesting, copyright-related, legal blog of the week might be that of Venable LLP from Lee S. Brenner.  If you ever wondered what are the legal limits of First Amendment Speech, apparently a court of appeals has drawn the line: the First Amendment does not protect misleading commercial speech.

Read more:
https://www.closeupsblog.com/2020/07/court-of-appeal-affirms-no-first-amendment-protection-for-misleading-commercial-speech/#page=1

If you claim something in an advertisement that is more likely to deceive than to inform (accurately), you should take this to heart. Prevaricating for profit is not protected speech. Perhaps, the issue is even more egregious given the business name of the accused.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/

Catalogs of Apocalypses

I'm reading a new anthology called APOCALYPTIC, edited by S. C. Butler and Joshua Palmer. Not surprisingly, the stories tend toward downer endings; optimistic viewpoints on worldwide devastation are few. So far, my favorite piece, "Coafield's Catalog of Available Apocalypse Events," by Seanan McGuire, isn't exactly a story, because it has no narrative arc. It comprises a humorous A to Z list of alternatives offered to customers who have "decided to end the human race and possibly the world," promoted by what appears to be a sort of disaster-scenario catering service. Q, by the way, stands for "Quantum," and Z, of course, represents Zombies.

TVTropes has a page listing all major scenarios for the destruction of the human race, Earth, the solar system, or the universe:

Apocalypse How

Disasters are classified according to Scope (all the way from local or city-wide to universal, multiversal, or even omniversal) and Severity (from societal disruption or collapse up to physical or metaphysical annihilation). Examples of each possible permutation are cited, and there's also a list of pages for the most common causes of disruption or destruction.

Back in 1979, Isaac Asimov published A CHOICE OF CATASTROPHES, an exhaustive survey of possible ways our species, our planet, the solar system, or the entire space-time continuum might end or at least become uninhabitable. He categorizes them as catastrophes of the first through the fifth class, from universal down to local. The first class involves the entire universe. Second, the solar system could be (indeed, eventually will be) destroyed or rendered inhospitable to life. Third, life could become impossible on Earth. Fourth, the human species might be wiped out while some other life survives. Fifth, humanity could survive the destruction of our civilization. The fifth class is the type most often portrayed in "apocalyptic" fiction featuring plagues, zombie hordes, meteor bombardments, etc.

I'm not sure how the word "apocalypse," which is simply Greek for "revelation," got its popular meaning as the cataclysmic end of civilization, life, or the world. Most likely the connotation developed that way because what the "apocalyptic" biblical and extra-canonical prophecies usually revealed was the destruction of the present world order and sometimes Earth itself. When Buffy saves the world "a lot" and the Winchester brothers in the SUPERNATURAL series prevent multiple apocalypses, it's life on Earth they're usually saving.

Anyway, an author who wants to destroy civilization, humanity, organic life, the world, or the universe has a plethora of methods to choose from.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt