Career Management for Writers in a Changing World

Last week we took a detour from Theme-Plot integration into Business Model discussions. 

http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/01/business-model-of-writers-in-changing.html


In November 2012 I went to a benefit concert where Theodore Bikel sang folksongs in many languages (all but one of which I know a bit of). As you probably know by now, I'm a big Theodore Bikel fan, and will rave about him below, but this is more about planning and executing a long, targeted and lucrative career in the arts. So first lets take a long look at a writer's career you should study. Here's a writer I have followed for about twenty years less than I've followed Theodore Bikel, and about whom I know a lot less. He's Allan Cole:

a very friendly guy, comfortable and voluble in the "new media" world -- blogging, Facebook, twitter, etc. I've run into him almost everywhere, and just take his presence forgranted because he's always around, saying something to think about or to relay to others who've been talking about it.

Just look at his picture.  Isn't that a guy you'd be glad to sit and listen to for a while?  Well, if you're planning a  career as a writer -- or even any kind of creative endeavor in any medium yet to be invented -- you would do well to pay attention to Allan Cole.

Here are some clues for how to start -- and don't grit your teeth.  Sometimes studying can be fun! 

Here's his IMDB page --

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0170426/

IMDB is the movie database with all the credits listed so you can see who did what -- or look up a PERSON who works on movies and see what movies or TV shows they've done.  All that with only a free account, and you can find great movies and TV shows and click through to buy with Amazon just like that!  With a paid account, there's lots more information for professionals. 

Here's Allan Cole's public bio from IMDB. 

-----------QUOTE-------------
Allan Cole is a best-selling author, screenwriter and former prize-winning newsman who brings a
rich background in travel and personal experience to his imaginative work. Raised in Europe and the Far East, Cole attended thirty-two schools and visited or lived in as many countries. He recalls hearing The Tempest for the first time as a child sitting on an ancient fortress wall in Cyprus - the island Shakespeare may have had in mind when he wrote the play. Rejecting invitations to become a CIA operative like his father, Cole became an award-winning investigative reporter and editor who dealt with everything from landmark murder cases to thieving government officials. Since that time he's concentrated on books and film. His novels include the landmark science fiction series, "Sten," the highly-praised fantasy trilogy, "Tales Of The Timuras," and the Vietnam war classic, "A Reckoning For Kings." Allan has sold more than a hundred television dramas, ranging from "Quincy" and "The Rockford Files" to "Walker, Texas Ranger." He lives in Boca Raton, Florida, with his wife, Kathryn.
-----------END QUOTE -----------

The "Sten" series novels mentioned in that bio (terrific reading!)

Here's #1 -- follow the link to find the others.



have been published then reprinted interntionally with huge sales numbers, and recently been republished in USA editions in ebook, paper, and audiobook from audible.com (fabulous reader!).  It's no wonder.  They're great reading or listening, but they have another dimension to them.

As I've been telling you on this blog, the knack of selling text-stories in today's market CHANGED.  The big sales now go to novels structured like screenplays -- and/or with scenes structured like screenplays -- and/or with characters formulated like TV characters.

I've been unable to tell you when that shift happened.  It wasn't abrupt, and it wasn't bally-hooed about in the media, and it wasn't noted in books on writing craft.  It just sneaked up on us.

Now I know when it happened.  I ran into one of Allen Cole's blogs, I don't remember where, perhaps on twitter, a couple years ago.  This one is about his adventures as a screenwriter in Hollywood.

http://allan-cole.blogspot.com/   -- titled MY HOLLYWOOD MISADVENTURES

As of Jan. 2013, http://alcole.blogspot.com/  carries installments of a biographical laugh-a-minute life story episode in Allan Cole's life titled THE BLUE MEANIE (also set in Los Angeles, but prior to the Misadventures).  It's about the time when Allan worked as a journalist and managed apartment buildings.

Who could resist such a title?   It's about "If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen!" 

You will note Allan Cole had many successes in selling screenplays.  But what about the failures and the embarrassments and the just plain disasters wound up in the origin of those successes?  Most writers won't tell on themselves.  Allan Cole tells on himself, and makes you double over in laughter while he's at it. 

When you're done reading these blogs (a bunch are collected into an ebook for easy reading, find the link on the blog page at the top), you will have a new perspective on what it means "career in writing." 

And don't think this pertains just to Hollywood.  The same stuff goes on in print publishing.  It's the nature of big business to treat "talent" or "content providers" as the least important cogs in the wheels. 

Now remember, we're looking at a biography that stretches into the past in order to construct a game-plan for a life and  career that stretches into the future.

Look at the history of the STEN series.  It started in the early 1980's, a bit after Sime~Gen which began in 1969 -- from material developed decades before that. 

Note this blog:
http://stencole.blogspot.com/
-- where Allan gave us a wonderful series of posts during the election cycle titled HOW THE ETERNAL EMPEROR STEALS ELECTIONS -- the "Eternal Emperor" of note is one of the main characters in the STEN series who definitely belongs on the USA NETWORK CHARACTERS WELCOME series.  In fact, several of the characters from STEN, including Sten himself, belong on USA as stars of their own series! 

Here's a quote from Allan Cole on Facebook pointing us to parts of his autobiography:

--------------QUOTE-------------
Allan Cole I've written two parts of it:

Lucky In Cyprus - https://sites.google.com/site/colesnewspreviews/the-lucky-in-cyprus-page and

Tales Of The Blue Meanie - https://sites.google.com/site/colesnewspreviews/the-summer-of-love-page
I've got two more I'm writing (not counting the MisAdventures) Lucky In Okinawa and The Game Warden's Sons
-----------END QUOTE------------

Now think hard about this "changing world" that I've been talking about in posts like those about the crumbling business model for writers, the whole social media evolution and self-publishing, then Indie ebook-only publishers, now web-series TV. 

What I call "the fiction delivery system" is shifting hard, as hard in the coming decades as in the century after Guttenberg's movable type concept hit the world.

From historyguide.org

Guttenberg worked on his gadget in the mid-1400's -- 500 years later, a similar distribution channel opening created "Hollywood" -- i.e. flicks, film, movies.  Stories in pictures that MOVE.

But distribution was clumsy -- people had to go to special places to see these "flicks."

OK, but by 1950 Television was deploying those moving-image stories into people's living rooms.

There was a market for such pictured-fiction, they knew, from the hoards that frequented movie houses --- and from the immense success of radio fiction that developed concurrently. 

It's all about how much it costs to put the story into the consumer's hands.  Remember that when creating your career plans.  COST vs. PRICE

It costs such-and-so to create the product and move it to the consumer, but what will the consumer pay?  How much do they want it, and how much free cash flow do they have to spend on stuff they just want?

Now consider your age as you launch your writing career.  How many years will you be at this business?  Of course, there's always the chance you'll strike it rich and retire early, but really, is that what you (a born storyteller) want?  To not-write new stories?

Look now at the career arc of Theodore Bikel. 

He is a great writer, true, but he's an actor, a singer, raconteur and many other kinds of performer.

Here he is on IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000942/

Here is his website:
http://bikel.com

And here is the photo from that website:  

And that's exactly how he looks today, so I didn't take any photos of him during his performance that I just went to see.

If he looks familiar -- or sounds familiar (you can get all his recordings as MP3 on Amazon ) it might be because he played Worf's human father on Star Trek. 

Here is the little auditorium at the benefit, and the tiny stage with really spiffy, ultra-modern sound equipment and excellent lighting -- all the technical trappings you could hope for anywhere.  I got there early.  Eventually, the place filled up. 

Many of the shows he was in happened so long ago they aren't on IMDB.  There is one film, in particular, I'd love to have titled Fraulein that Theo was in, and on one of his albums which is a recording at a live concert, he tells the story of how he was hired to play a Russian, and asked if he knew any Russian songs.  So he said, "A few." (actually it's more than a few, but that's how you talk in Hollywood.)  And they asked him to bring in a few and perform for them.  So he did, and they loved the songs -- but said they couldn't use them because of copyright.  All the songs were very old folk songs, but that's how they talk in Hollywood.  So they said they'd have a genuine old Russian folksong composed for him to sing.  He sang it in this film, it says on the recording of the concert.  The song is, I think, titled Nichevo. 

I have searched for this movie many times -- but as I was writing this blog entry, I poked around Amazon some more, and found this listed as available for STREAMING (to my Kindle Fire, or my TV, or probably even my phone if I could figure out how to do that).  So I got it. 

Here's the details from that movie on Amazon's page:

 Product Details
Synopsis: A Nazi's fiancee helps an escaped U.S. soldier, then meets him in postwar Berlin.
Starring: Dana Wynter, Mel Ferrer
Supporting actors: Dolores Michaels, Margaret Hayes, Theodore Bikel, Luis Van Rooten, Helmut Dantine, Herbert Berghof, James Edwards, Ivan Triesault, Blandine Ebinger, Jack Kruschen, Dorothy Arnold, John Banner, Edith Clair, Peter Coe, Gabriel Curtiz, Don Diamond, Ed Erwin, Fred Essler, Gerry Gaylor, Alex Goudavich
Directed by: Henry Koster
Genre: Romance, War, Drama
Runtime: 1 hour 37 minutes
Release year: 1958
Studio: 20th Century Fox
ASIN: B0025X6072 (Rental) and B0025X7W5G (Purchase)
Rights & Requirements
Rental rights: 24 hour viewing period Details
Purchase rights: Stream instantly and download to 2 locations. Details
Format: Amazon Instant Video (streaming online video and digital download)

1958 -- can you believe that?  I found a movie from 1958 mentioned on a record from I suppose the 1960's -- that I haven't seen -- with Theodore Bikel in it. 

NOTE THE GENRE OF THIS FILM -- ROMANCE.

This is a perfect example of what I'm pointing out to you here as an element to consider carefully as you manage your career as a writer, a "content provider."  1958 -- about 500 years after Guttenberg.  Think about that.  Think very carefully about the implications for our future -- "if this goes on ..."

Here's where to see the movie for yourself -- NOTE HOW YOUNG HE LOOKS compared to the picture from his website which is how he looks now.  Imagine your life "then" and "now."  And remember he was born in 1924.  He's going on 90.  What will your "backlist" look like when you're going on 90? 



Many of the shows he was in happened so long ago they aren't on IMDB.  There is one film, in particular, I'd love to have titled Frauline that starred Theo, but it doesn't turn up in google search -- it's very old.

Here's Theo's autobiography (told you he's a writer!)




I was sure I'd seen it on Kindle, but the only one I can find now is the paper edition.  *sigh* We really need an ebook edition.

I have the first edition which I got him to autograph long ago. 

Here's a quote from Kirkus Reviews:

----------QUOTE-------
Review

"A compelling life, taking Bikel from pre–World War II Eastern Europe to an acting career in Israel; emigration to England after the war, training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, and initial success in British theater and film; a leap to the Broadway stage and stardom in The Sound of Music; productive years as a Hollywood character actor; a new career as a folksinger in the late1950s; then several decades of activism, as president of Actors’ Equity and a prominent figure in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements."—Kirkus Reviews
---------------END QUOTE---------------

If you're planning a career -- not just "I want to get my book published," but "I want to make a living as a writer," you need to read dozens of such biographies before planning your life.

But this one is particularly interesting when compared to Allan Cole's life. 

Theo was born in 1924, barely escaped annihilation in the war, spent time learning acting in England and lived in Israel before it was "Israel" officially (again), and in Paris where he learned Russian gypsy songs.

Look at both of these careers as the relentless application of the need to communicate, regardless of the technological means at hand.  Each time, during these chronicled decades, these documented decades of history, that technology or life-circumstance changed, each man grabbed hold of what was available and poured "message" into the "speaking tube" between himself and his audience.

Allan Cole tells of how he just fell into screenwriting while trying to launch a novel career, and considers himself a novelist who sometimes writes for screen. 

HERE'S THE BIG KICKER:
I didn't know this when I started writing this post, but trading comments with Allan Cole on his Facebook Group, I mentioned Theo Bikel and here's what Allan Cole said:

--------QUOTE-------------

Allan Cole Theodore Bikel! Fabulous actor, and dedicated supporter of worthy causes. First time I saw him was when he played one of the Nazi officers who captured Bogart and Hepburn in The African Queen. Talk about being totally opposite the character you're playing. Now, that's acting. Followed him closely his entire career.
---------END QUOTE--------

In case you don't know the film, here it is, and you can rent it on Amazon for $2.99 to watch streaming instantly (see, that's what I mean by a changing world - some of the really oldest material is still available.  Plan your career accordingly.  Don't put out anything you're going to be ashamed of later. 

Read about Theo, and you'll always find an acoustical guitar around in his life somewhere.  He still plays acoustic guitar (and very well, too!).  When he had no work as an actor, he was singing at parties -- not even getting paid to do it -- way into the wee hours.  Today his voice is as deep, resonant and strong as ever. 

There's an energy inside these people that just pours out, and like water, finds a channel somewhere. 

Is that you?

Is that what you're like?  Is what you do who you are? 

Then check out the arc of technology into the future, such as we can see it today.

If civilization holds together long enough, we will see over the next few decades how technology will change our civilization at its roots, just as the printing press did. 

The way we communicate, and with whom we communicate, has changed.  All this "social networking" stuff is more like the moving type concept added to the printing press concept.  It's a furbish added on top of the internet, a refinement.

And there will be more such innovations, just as there came newspapers, magazines, color printing, paperback novels, the Ace Doubles novels, radio drama, TV drama.

And here we are, with these people whose lives are all about communicating, who are now "accessible" on the web -- and look at that concert venue!  I've been to many concerts, but that was the closest I've been to a stage. 

Oh, there was one unforgettable experience I had in Las Vegas one time I was passing through and spent some time at Circus Circus -- just happened to luck into sitting almost right under the net looking up at a flying act, dust from the net falling into my eyes.  NEVER been so close (and these guys were the world-famous sort who perform for Ringling).  Circus has been one of my primary hobbies for a long time, so it was a glamorous moment, yes, but instructive in so many other ways. 

So yes, life delivers a few of these moments when you can "make contact" with a performer.

But consider being the performer.

Writing is a performing art.  What does it take to keep performing regardless of the twists and turns  of the technology of your delivery channel?  Do you have that? 

You see, the trick is to know that you don't "change yourself" -- or your art or your product -- to fit changing times.  You draw upon the raw material you collected growing up, and shape that material to fit the currently available channels for output. 

In the 1950's, when television was new, singers took their record hits from record-store sales and radio, and performed them on TV.  Elvis Presley was a "discovery" on "The Ed Sullivan Show" (a variety show, recycling stage performances to TV.

Performers had to adapt to "the small screen."  Red Skelton is another name you should look up for a media-evolution spanning career study. 

I saw in the popularity of a weekly half-hour show called The Hit Parade the earliest origins of, believe it or not, videogaming.

The Hit Parade was just the biggest selling recorded singers/songs of the week -- and that was pre-vinyl when records were breakable.  The show actually spanned the transition to the 45RPM (those little records with the big holes.) 

It was "The Lucky Strike Hit Parade" -- it had only one sponsor, the cigarette brand Lucky Strike.  Despite loving the show, I never became a smoker.

What did I see in that televised show of singers standing at a mike on a stage just singing songs you heard on the radio?  I saw THE MUSIC VIDEO -- and then they invented the music video!

But when I saw Music Videos take off as an artform, I saw videogames -- interactiving games.

When I saw interactive videogames take off, I saw all kinds of things that are only now becoming part of our lives (such as actual pilot training done by simulator, and drone planes used for various purposes controlled remotely).  I wasn't the only one to project these developments.  SF writers poured out more visions of futures than will ever happen.

Speaking of changing media, here's another item I found posted on Allan Cole's facebook Group.
----------QUOTE------------
Allan Cole
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57548460-1/curtains-for-cursive-typing-replaces-handwriting-in-schools/
Curtains for cursive? Typing replaces handwriting in schools
Keyboards continue their slow march to domination, overthrowing pens and pencils in schools across the nation. Read this article by Amanda Kooser on CNET.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
I've heard so many talking about this. I'm going to put this in that January blog post where I'm recommending writing students study the careers of Allan Cole and Theo Bikel. It's about anticipating media changes in the future. The new 007 movie, which I haven't seen, is reputed to have little in the way of imaginative, astonishing gadgetry we've never thought of before - but good chase scenes. Life in the arts is all about CHANGE -- I'm expecting videogames and music video artforms to converge soon.
---------END QUOTE -------------- 

I still think the music-video and video-game artforms (think about smartphones!) are on a collision course and will be the foundation of new artforms designed for new distribution technology that will carry the stories of the future.  The evolution will follow something similar to what we've seen in the graphic novel (which is one of the most exciting things happening!)

And remember it's all about COST vs. PRICE.  Business model.  That's the key to a long career.

Now, remember when you were 10 years old?  15?  What was life like then? 

Think about what life will be 60 years later.

Consider the shortening intervals between culture-shifting innovations in communications and travel technology.  500 years from Guttenberg to 1955 -- overlapping in there radio, TV, and computers, -- Star Trek and the internet overlapping development -- the web coming from European origin then overlapping, setting fire to inventions, and now web radio from around the world, and Web TV.

We've seen more real change in how we live in the last 50 years than in the previous 500.

Where will we be 50 years from now?  Consider 2012 saw the first real evidence that there really is such a thing as the "Higgs Boson" -- the "God Particle" that is the medium or origin of gravity, and thus possibly the key to interstellar travel.

Will we find the "particle" responsible for "time?" 

How could that change how you entertain your customers? 

What basic skills that I've been pointing you toward will you need 50 years from now?  How many of these story-structure skills will be useful to you then?  How much effort should you put into developing those skills?

Think about Theodore Bikel's voice training in England -- read his autobiography!   He tells "stories" in song.  That's what folksongs are -- little vignettes, stories encapsulated for transmission through the generations.  The Bible is a SONG -- ever heard it sung?  It's a SONG!!!  Look how long that's lasted.  The acoustic guitar -- that's a descendent of the lyre that King David (who wrote most of the songs sung in The Temple now available as the Book of Psalms, part of the Bible in many printings.)  Songs have structure.

Think about Allan Cole's experiences in the military.  Martial arts is often called poetry in motion.

Novels and feature films tell stories with a structure -- derived from life itself. 

What have you got that's similar to what these men with long, variegated careers had when they started? 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

The Character Simulator in Our Brains

Here’s a new Cory Doctorow column that really grabbed me. It’s about the creation of characters and why the good ones seem real to readers (and even to the writers who invent them):

Where Characters Come From

Doctorow suggests that all our brains contain “a little built-in simulator in which we run miniature copies of all the people in our lives.” These mental “copies” allow us to predict the behavior of others and thereby interact with them effectively. For people we’ve just met, the “avatar” in our mind is like a “crude stick figure” incorporating stereotyped impressions, just enough to get by in the standard situations where we’re likely to encounter that person. The better we get to know someone, the more depth the mental copy acquires and the better we can predict the real person’s behavior. “The simulator also contains dead people”—so we can imagine the reactions of loved ones who are no longer physically present in our lives. From that point, it’s a short step to spawning individuals who never existed in the physical world at all. “You and your simulator collaborate to create your imaginary people.”

Read the article for Doctorow’s concept of how character creation sets up a “feedback loop” that results in characters coming “to life” for the writer. Ideally, they come to life for readers, too, to the extent of evoking the same physiological responses caused by real-life fear, sadness, and excitement. These imaginary people may even continue to live in the reader’s mind after the end of the book. Hence the fanfic impulse, which Doctorow thinks is not a bad thing: “If fanfic is a sign that your characters were successfully transplanted from your head to someone else’s, you’d be nuts to want to undo that. . . . If you don’t want your people to live in other peoples’ heads, you shouldn’t set out to put them there.”

It’s nice to know I’m not crazy because I have such intense emotional responses to women, men, children, and other creatures made entirely of ink or pixels.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Business Model of Writers In A Changing World

I've been inserting posts in this blog about the Writer's Business Model for years.  Here's one of many:

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

The thesis I learned from Alvin Toffler's Future Shock decades ago is now a constantly growing reality for writers -- as a writer you are self-employed and a "small business."  Well, micro-business.  But a business none-the-less.

So I've also done posts on Marketing -- about which I really know nothing and have no education in that field.  But I keep running into people with marketing expertise and learning from them.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

I just had a writing student self-publish an item and come back to me bewildered about why 3 readers commented in public that they were disappointed, couldn't relate to the main character.

The writer felt the book was terrible.  I counter-argued that the marketing was terrible -- the particular readers who thought from the blurb that they'd like the book did not like it because they couldn't relate to the main character.  If the marketing targeted readers who could relate to that character, the readers would not be wailing out their disappointment.  That's really how it works.  Markets are divided by what kinds of characters they can relate to.

The same plot told from a different character's point of view could grab that audience. 

There are rules for picking a protagonist, and I've detailed them in prior posts.  But self-publishing is all about business model -- and the choice of protagonist is all about business model.

The business of writing is, however, still in massive flux.  The audiences are changing faster than publishing can keep up. 

Here is another take on the theories I'm kicking around, looking for how this all will settle out. 

I've been blogging for some time about the WRITER'S BUSINESS MODEL constructed on shifting sands.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/02/amateur-goes-professional.html

Only new, small, startup, Indie with no baggage, NIMBLE companies can do the kind of things required by the new audiences.  As a new writer, or an older writer going Indie, you have a chance  nobody before you has had.

One important point to remember: release on many platforms  not just Amazon or B&N or Smashwords (which reaches a lot) -- reach for wide availability, and plan to add platforms and outlets as the appear (remembering they will disappear, too). 

I blogged on the state of TV fiction, noting the increasing # of commercials and the disappearance even of REPEATS -- how there are vast stretches on hundreds of channels (I did a lot of flipping and channel surfing)  -- showing the shrinking market for TV fiction while netflix, hulu, Amazon and others are grabbing "content" to stream.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/07/targeting-readership-part-5-where-is.html

The title is WHERE IS EVERYBODY? because I saw a huge lacuna in the TV broadcast fiction flow.   People who schedule TV and sell commercial time (I've known some) know when there's audience and when not!  I don't.  But I know they put stuff in front of eyeballs, and if they can't find eyeballs they don't put the stuff there.

I argued in that post that my observations showed a massive shift in habits of the viewing public.

I've done a series of blog posts starting in December 2012 focusing on the origin, development, and effect of PR into modern "Marketing" (i.e. commercial advertising) with lots more to say about that, and how an Indie writer can exploit that trend.  I've learned a lot from examining this current election cycle.

THEME-PLOT INTEGRATION is the series title for those.  There will be a few more in that series later.

Here's PART 4 with links to prior parts. 
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/01/theme-plot-integration-part-4-fallacies.html

I thought I was the only one to see what I was seeing in bits and pieces I could glean from TV and online ads about the election.

But one of the foremost media personalities with a track record in POLLING has (in disgust because he was oh-so-wrong) spat out the exact observation I (without the expensive input sources he has) made!

Here's his article on it (note the disgust he evidences - the confused distress in the semantics).

http://www.dickmorris.com/the-campaign-made-no-difference/

Billions spent on TV ads literally made no difference in people's political opinions.

What's astonishing to me is that I knew this before the billions went to TV ads, and he (who has all the info I don't have) didn't know it.  Can that be true?  Really?  I seriously doubt it.  He ran an internet campaign to collect millions to spend on political ads and spent it.  Many other organizations did the same.  It wasn't unpaid volunteer work.  People got paid to write and produce those ads, to market-test them, to track the statistics, oh a lot of people made a living from those millions that had nothing to do with educating voters. 

Note in this discussion that nobody spends money like that on ads selling books.  Even a blockbuster movie doesn't get ad-blitz coverage like that.  Fiction isn't profitable to advertise -- that's the only firm conclusion I know of.  The few book commercials I've seen have been sparsely distributed.  Today book trailers go up on YouTube and get distributed via social networks -- not TV.  Cost-effectiveness is the reason. 

Ad resistance is heartening to me because I see how TV ads have manipulated people into self-destructive behavior, and it seems while I wasn't paying attention, the trend has reversed.

It's dismaying because all the other evidence I have indicates people are just as amenable to self-destructive behavior as ever because they can't see fallacies in other people's reasoning because (many people in education have told me) of the lack of elementary school training in basic reasoning. 

As I've pointed out in my series on Theme-Plot Integration, a writer who can identify and define a popular fallacy can sell a lot of fiction using that insight.  Critical thinking is now a marketable commodity.  Think about that! 

Note that the fallacies I'm pointing out in the Theme-Plot integration series that writers can use are not about "fact-checking" (though that's a fertile field to plow).  The facts behind a fallacy may or may not be solid -- it's the conclusion that's fallacious.

I see in the gaming community a glimmer of light. 

Here is a group that is training mind-and-hand to not fall for specious tricks for the benefit of the tricker to the detriment of the trickee. 

Some of my most popular blog entries here are

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/04/story-springboards-part-2-tv-shows.html

and this one with over 1500 views:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/02/tv-shows-leverage-and-psych.html

Those are about TV shows which focus on armoring viewers against con artist's tricks (i.e. advertising). 

The fragmentation of audiences into different media (which left that silent hole in TV Fiction as I surveyed it during a period between "seasons" ) could be the counter to the whole thing of controlling the world by creating herd behavior. 

Kickstarter.com is a beacon of real hope here, as is the whole social media trend.  Indie self-publishing ebook industry is coming along.  Amazon is making FEATURE FILMS!!!

People want to do what they want to do when and where they want to do it with whatever they happen to have at hand, and no back-sass.  

People just won't deal with barriers like DRM.

However it may seem to outsiders, this behavior is not capriciousness or whim, it's the drive to a self-chosen goal.

What audiences have at hand these days is a smartphone.  Various tablets likewise.  There are platform wars going on by those whose business model requires proprietary control of their product.  People just won't STAND FOR THAT.

So create your business model to cater to those who WON'T STAND FOR THAT.

Provide them a product that delivers the pleasure hit of a world where "I DON'T HAVE TO STAND FOR THAT!"  And a life-model that shows how to stand independently within a bonded cooperative partnership -- where the partnership doesn't have to stand for that!

The success of C. J. Cherryh's FOREIGNER series is real evidence that I'm onto something here.



If you haven't been reading that, get #1 and work through it in numerical order.  It's a series of trilogies, all about the same Main (POV) Character, telling his personal STORY -- but as he becomes a mover and shaker in a giant, multicultural environment.  C. J. Cherryh is one of the best writers working today -- and this particular series is lightly laced with alien romance -- which you just don't see unless you know it's there.  Sex is "go to black" and use your imagination.  But the Relationship, the intimate personal relationship between human and alien is what drives the plot. 

The aliens live in a world where "herd" creatures evolved to human levels (maybe beyond), but their "herd" instincts are different from anything on earth --- yet somewhat similar. 

The human "herd" works the opposite of earth's animal herd -- we don't follow a leader.  We all make individual decisions and if others make the same decision (usually for different reasons) -- we all SEEM TO RUN IN THE SAME DIRECTION -- but that's not what's happening. 

Working with that in this changing world where what appeared to be a human herd (as detailed in the Theme-Plot Integration posts on fallacy spotting) can reach a very wide audience among those who JUST WON'T STAND FOR THAT (whatever 'that' may be in your novel).  And toss in an alien civilization trying to puzzle out humans, and you can really confuse the aliens, getting a lot of mileage out of one thematic premise.  C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner universe is a grand example.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
http://www.simegen.com/jl/
http://twitter.com/jlichtenberg

Ring in the New

Happy New Year! Anybody have any resolutions? Some people use the term "goals" instead, which I prefer.

Now that I've "retired" from my day job, my goal for 2013 is to write on a regular schedule for a consistent number of hours each day. I also want to explore some promotional activities that I haven't been able to fit in previously.

I consider myself a painfully slow writer and would like to get more done faster, and an established writing schedule should facilitate this goal. A few months ago, I did the simple math that hadn't occurred to me in all these decades: 1000 words per day equal a novella in a month and the draft of a standard-length novel in about three months!

Even taking into account the facts that most people won't write every day of the week, unexpected real-life events will sometimes disrupt the pattern, and time must be allotted for revision, 1000 words a day produce two novels or several shorter works per year. And even at my speed, I can crank out 1000 words in two hours. Without a day job, I don't have any reasonable excuse not to write for a least two hours a day several days per week. (Provided I know in advance what I'm going to be working on—I'm a dedicated outliner, who would be lost without a framework for the work.)

The calendar date for the start of the year is arbitrary (which is one reason I've become a little "bah-humbug" about "resolutions"), but it still turns our thoughts to fresh beginnings. What goals have you set for 2013?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Plot Integration Part 4: Fallacies and Endorphins

If you're reading this on New Year's Day, stop and come join us for our annual Sime~Gen New Year's chat -- info and instructions on the Sime~Gen Group on Facebook and/or http://out-territory.blogspot.com

Then come back and read about how to use the basic Theme and Plot techniques I've been harping on in these Tuesday posts to avoid expository lumps.  Yes, that's what this is all about -- avoiding boring the reader by telling rather than showing.  Put all the information into the substrata of the composition, into the structural elements.  This is an advanced lesson, combining two techniques, Theme and Plot. 

Previous parts in this Theme-Plot Integration Series:
Part 1 http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-1-never-let.html
Part 2  http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-2-fallacy.html
Part 3  http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-3-fallacy.html

Before we continue with all this criticizing and negativity, let me just point out that the reason we harbor so many fallacies is that our brains are structured to arrange information in such a way that we are most likely to find what we need to know to survive -- and to do that, we just ignore stuff that doesn't seem to pertain to our lives.

This brain structure quirk has kept our species alive but it isn't necessarily pro-individual survival.

The key is of course choosing your fallacies wisely, and ditching the ones that impair your survival, and your ability to accomplish your particular purpose.

The process of ditching a cherished fallacy even has a name which has become a touchstone of writer-craft structure.  This is a very specifically formulated moment in film or novel, a singular moment in the entire life of your Main Character. 

This exquisite moment is called The Epiphany and it is the main climax of the Story, but not usually the Plot.  It is the moment the Main Character realizes where he/she has been oh-so wrong about something, that there has been a fallacy in reasoning, and/or a failure to ask and answer a question, to discover a key fact. 

The Epiphany in a Romance is usually the moment that one character finally understands why he/she has been doing these ridiculous things, taking irrational risks to save someone else's butt, or attacking some other person out of virulent dislike that nobody else can understand.  The Epiphany is "I Love You." 

Religious Enlightenment stories pivot around the Epiphany "God is Real." 

Betrayal stories pivot on "My Best Friend Is My Worst Enemy." 

Constructing a good epiphany requires first laying down a really plausible fallacy. 

One good source of dynamite fallacies is the lies everyone believes.

Here's a blog post on the business of Film Making - and Screenwriting pinpointing 4 lies that have been sold as truths to the unsuspecting.  If your main character is trying to break into an industry that markets art (any such industry from oil-paintings sold at street fairs to High Fashion in Paris) these 4 lies are wondrous sources of Fallacy to harbor and Epiphany when the fallacy is shattered.

http://www.raindance.org/hollywoods-4-biggest-lies/ 

The thesis in that article is that Hollywood is a film MARKETING industry (not film making industry).

For the purpose of studying Fallacies and how they are used in our real world so we can use them in fictional worldbuilding, we need to consider that Marketing is based on PR (public relations) which is, thanks Bernays - (as mentioned previously in this series, see Links above) a science. 

I've been talking about writing as a performing art and the business of writing as a marketing problem here for years. 
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/marketing-via-social-networking.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/03/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

And there is the 7 part series I've done on Editing that has helped a lot of beginners get their start.

This has links to the prior parts all listed at the top:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-exactly-is-editing-part-vii-how-do.html

Marketing now runs on commercials and sound-bytes, YouTube videos and Endorsements.  It used to be jingles and slogans when all they had was radio and B&W magazines.  But since Bernays came up with his herd-instinct idea driven by fear of the behavior of other humans (a wondrously fruitful fallacy for writers to explore), Marketing has been a Science. 

We have had blockbuster TV shows set in Advertising Companies or revolving around a character who writes advertising for a living.  Those characters are always rich -- there's a reason for that.  In real life, those who've mastered Advertising Copy Writing and TV Ad production are a lot richer than any mere novelist. 

Does Advertising work for Marketing because humans really do have a herd instinct?  Or does it work for another reason? 

Are humans who are conditioned to behave as individuals, who don't need or want a "Leader" because they aren't followers and therefore don't prize Leadership, who aren't subject to any herd instinct or tendency, actually dangerous? 

To whom are they dangerous?  What exactly is the danger?  Who would take damage if humans got loose?  The answer to each of those questions could be used to form that Epiphany Moment in a film or novel.

Some of the best romance stories pivot on the subconscious fear of love, leading to the Epiphany that Love Is Not A Threat, that fear of love has a fallacy at its root. 

That type of fallacy novel is about the lies we tell ourselves. 

See the post on Weaponizing Lies
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/08/dialogue-part-4-legal-weasel.html

Here is a website devoted to videogames made by Bioware and Lucasarts (now part of Disney) based on Star Wars. 

http://www.swtor.com/info/setting

Note, the whole Star Wars saga is based on the current-world's most cherished fallacy -- and nobody, but absolutely nobody, ever identifies this fallacy: that "peace" can be achieved by the process of "fighting," fighting to the death. 

This is such a whopping huge Fallacy that once you have that Epiphany that it's utter nonsense, and you no longer wonder why all these millennia of fighting for peace have not resulted in Peace On Earth, then suddenly the whole world becomes incomprehensible.  Why would you hire a politician who wants to "fight for you" -- before you have this epiphany, it's so reasonable to want to vote for the Champion who can win your rights for you, and afterwards it becomes clear how Advertising has perpetuated this particular Fallacy. 

There's at least a series of novels in finding out who benefits from perpetuating that fallacy. 

Star Wars must be the single biggest marketable product to come along selling the "Fight For Peace" fallacy as necessary in the "War Against Evil." 

Star Wars  may be bigger than Star Trek by now. 
Star Trek is based on "when we become wise" (as Gene Roddenberry always said in his speeches at conventions) we will have peace.  Peace achieved through acquiring wisdom is the theme.  But Star Wars out-sells Star Trek. 

Fighting is more fun than becoming wise.

Fighting is fun because of that endorphin addiction noted in
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/11/dialogue-part-5-how-to-write-liar.html

Endorphins are create by the body, relaxing and triggering a pleasure response. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endorphins

----------QUOTE WIKIPEDIA --------------
Endorphins ("endogenous morphine") are endogenous opioid peptides that function as neurotransmitters.[1] They are produced by the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus in vertebrates during exercise,[2] excitement, pain, consumption of spicy food, love and orgasm,[3][4] and they resemble the opiates in their abilities to produce analgesia and a feeling of well-being.

The term implies a pharmacological activity (analogous to the activity of the corticosteroid category of biochemicals) as opposed to a specific chemical formulation. It consists of two parts: endo- and -orphin; these are short forms of the words endogenous and morphine, intended to mean "a morphine-like substance originating from within the body."[5]

The term "endorphin rush" has been adopted in popular speech to refer to feelings of exhilaration brought on by pain, danger, or other forms of stress,[2] supposedly due to the influence of endorphins. When a nerve impulse reaches the spinal cord, endorphins that prevent nerve cells from releasing more pain signals are released. Immediately after injury, endorphins allow animals to feel a sense of power and control over themselves that allows them to persist with activity for an extended time.[citation needed]
---------------END QUOTE-----------

Humans can achieve this kind of response just from imagination.  So indeed, the "fallacy" of "fighting for peace" seems on the surface, from personal internal experience to be a "no brainer."

You FIGHT: You feel pleasure. 

Just as in the post on Liar Dialogue, Part 5 in the Dialogue Series:

You lie: You feel pleasure

You exercise power over others: You feel pleasure.

The book, You Can't Lie To Me by Janine Driver, illustrates how basic it is to the human animal to feel a rush of endorphins when exercising power over other humans.  Lying from a position of power, tricking others into doing what you want by reshaping their idea of reality, produces an addictive rush of endorphins -- it's addictive because you become immune to the effect and thus require a bigger rush or endorphins to get the pleasure hit.  You need more and more power over more and more people just to feel normal. 

Think about that concept -- read up on the science -- then think about "who" Bernays was, what his biography was, where inside him did the idea of humans as a herd to be controlled by lies come from?  Why are humans running loose without anyone controlling them dangerous?  To whom are they dangerous -- really, to whom? 

How many plots with dynamite epiphanies can you create by trying out different answers to those questions? 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Nonfiction, Fact, and Truth

Recently I read LISTENING TO MADELEINE, by Leonard S. Marcus, a collection of interviews with protegees, friends, colleagues, and family members of one of my favorite authors, Madeleine L’Engle. This book and a 2004 in-depth NEW YORKER magazine profile of her referred to in the introduction (the author of that article, Cynthia Zarin, supplies the final interview in the book) jolted me with information about L’Engle’s life and writings that I’d never encountered before. I’m an ardent fan of A WRINKLE IN TIME and its sequels and related books, and I’ve also read the Austin family novels (non-fantasy) with pleasure. In nonfiction, I admire the richness of her theological writings and poetry. While I knew the Austins and the Murrys (from the “Time” books) reflected autobiographical elements from L’Engle’s own family life, I didn’t imagine them to be factual; what sensible reader would? I hadn’t known, though, that her children sometimes resented having their lives adapted (and idealized) into fiction. Her son, Bion, apparently the model for both Rob Austin and Charles Wallace Murry, is said to have hated the Austin books.

What shocked me, however, were revelations (to me, at least) about the nonfiction memoirs collectively known as the Crosswicks Journals. L’Engle’s daughter Josephine discusses how her mother altered the past in her writing to fit her vision of how events should have happened. When readers mentioned events in the Crosswicks books to her, Josephine would often reply that it hadn’t happened that way: “You have to remember that my mother is a fiction writer.” According to the testimony in these interviews, her children felt the memoirs were more “fantasy” than the novels. But nobody maintained that L’Engle deliberately lied: “She would make sense of a thing to her own satisfaction. Then for her that story was reality.”

Now, I don’t claim an author writing about her life has an obligation to include everything, no matter how traumatic or embarrassing. Nor do I cherish absurd expectations for beloved authors to have ideal lives and no human flaws. L’Engle had a perfectly good right, for example, to keep the alcohol problems of her father, husband, and son private. C. S. Lewis omits a major sequence of events from his autobiography, SURPRISED BY JOY—but he explicitly says he’s leaving out an important episode and apologizes for the necessity. L’Engle, according to several of the interviewees, didn’t so much purposely omit negative elements as deny them even to herself (at least while writing).

Does the fact that some details in SUMMER OF THE GREAT-GRANDMOTHER may not report what “really happened” invalidate that book as a memorial to her mother and an inspiration to untold numbers of readers struggling with caring for elderly parents? I don’t think so. However, consider TWO-PART INVENTION, her memoir of her lifelong marriage to Hugh Franklin, published shortly after her death. That’s one of my all-time favorite books about marriage and the death of a spouse. Does it diminish the value of the book as an inspiration to others that we now know Hugh had a drinking problem and engaged in at least two extramarital affairs? Alan Jones, L’Engle’s former son-in-law, says, “In the Crosswicks Journal, she idealized her relationship with her mother enormously. And while I don’t think her marriage was at all disastrous, it was complicated, and TWO-PART INVENTION was a tremendously idealized picture of the marriage. I always thought the title was suitably ironical.” L’Engle doesn’t simply omit facts in this book. She explicitly says Hugh didn’t have the trouble with alcohol that many actors have, and she refers to their forty years of keeping their marriage vows in terms most readers would assume to imply fidelity.

As Cynthia Zarin puts it, “The picture that Madeleine painted of herself—and this is often true of writers—was not necessarily who she was. . . . She painted in her nonfiction books a picture of her life as she wished it to be. Then, in her fiction, she painted a life that was in some ways closer to the truth.” In principle, I don’t have a problem with that. I won’t stop loving her work. But I do think these insights raise a vital question about how much the value of a nonfiction, autobiographical work as artistic or thematic truth depends on its factual truth.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Plot Integration Part 3: Fallacy Analysis

This is Part 3 of Theme-Plot Integration, and here we'll look at some glaring fallacies in our world.

Previous Parts are here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-1-never-let.html

http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-2-fallacy.html


I'm collecting stuff here for future reference on the aftermath of Election 2012 - and what all that has to do with THEME-PLOT Integration.  In this part of the series on Theme-Plot Integration we're using the classic "fallacy" as the focus of the exercise. 

Here are websites that may still be available with statistics on the Election.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2012-election-results/#

http://nation.foxnews.com/2012-presidential-election/2012/11/07/fox-exit-poll-summary-2012-presidential-election

I just happened to click on a fox link and found these by accident -- nice technology, but CNN is probably better. 

Here's a DICK MORRIS newsletter:

http://www.dickmorris.com/why-i-was-wrong/

Read what he thinks led him astray in predicting the outcome of Election 2012 which differs so markedly from what he predicted. 

Morris highlights is important stuff about how fallacies work in drama illustrated in a real-world context.  Here he's digested a lot of information into a "briefing" that is perfectly constructed for busy writers to study.  And it tells you something very important about your target audience, the people you have to entertain to get them to buy your next book. 

The gist of it is the same comment I saw on CNN from their somewhat new commentator Van Jones.  Here's a clip with Van Jones reacting to CNN's re-election call.

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/07/gergen-election-outcome-shows-desire-for-moderation/

Here's an article about who Van Jones is and how he got to be a CNN commentator.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/09/06/van_jones_resigns.html

The United Stages Demographics Have Changed.  

I'll bet you already knew that.  Thing is, do you know from what the demographics changed and into what they changed -- but maybe most importantly, why? 

"Why?" is important because in the worlds you build around this theme of "fallacies" need that aura of verisimilitude to draw your readers into your reality.  Your world must be in flux, and that flux must be driven by a reason.  Why does your built world have to be in flux?  Because your audience's world is in flux, and any world not in flux will not seem "real" to that audience.

This theme-plot integration series of blog posts is pointing out how to use popular fallacies in weaving Theme-Plot Integration -- this is subtle philosophical stuff.  But it's not difficult to master. 
See how I have plucked out just one tiny bit from all this election data and found an element to include in your worldbuilding that will improve your sales?  In this case, demographics in flux changes the politics.

Now, "world in demographic flux" also has to be woven into theme, and then plot. 

Consider that one demographic segment that might flow like a tidal wave over an established, static world upsetting the whole balance of power in your fictional world could be -- oh, say Religion, as a wave of conversions sweeps through.  Or a plague might upset the male/female balance.  Or an invasion of aliens (think of the TV show ALIEN NATION -- but increase the number of refugees to say 3/4 of the indigenous population.)  Each cause for a change in the demographics of your built world points to a different set of themes.  Within each theme, you can find a pivotal fallacy to generate your plot. 

Remember fallacies are fallacies because they reside deep in the subconscious, behind the assumptions that make life livable.  And that is where your Hero's main Adversary comes from, that's the origin from which the Villain is projected.  Psychology has uncovered how this works.  Each of us is a Captain Ahab bound to our Whale.  The whale isn't Ahab's problem.  The binding is the problem.  Those bindings are made up out of the fallacies we harbor. 

Identify and articulate the fallacy in your Main Character's subconscious, and you have determined not only who/what the Adversary is, but also what the Conflict Resolution is.  That Resolution defines what the Conflict is.  Follow the conflict back to its origin, and you'll discover where exactly your story begins -- and be able to craft a narrative hook that will grab a very large audience.

Again and again, I need to emphasize that I'm not telling you what to think about which fallacy, but showing you HOW TO THINK LIKE A WRITER (which is very, very different from how a reader thinks).  This is about how to look at current events, find the widely-held fallacy, identify it inside yourself (if it's not inside you, it won't produce a great novel), and create the "argument" that dispels the fallacy.  That "argument" is your plot. 

The argument goes like this:
a) Hero believes Fallacy because (X)
b) Villain or Adversary believes differently and attacks X
c) Hero defends X (Ahab scrambling to stock his ship and get that damn fish -- or Columbus begging money from royalty to outfit ships to sail off the edge of the world)
d) Villain wins - disproving X (that's the middle, the low-point for Hero)
e) Hero realizes he's believed a fallacy - what he knows to be true is in fact not true (grand angst moment)
f) Villain takes advantage of angst-moment to attack
g) Hero gathers himself and creates a NEW BELIEF (which might be partially fallacious if you need a sequel) and attacks Villain
h) Villain gets away
i) Hero pursues and triumphs having freed himself of the bond to the villain by eliminating the cherished fallacy

If it's a Romance, Hero and Villain might be the couple -- or the Villain might be vanquished by the Hero and Heroine getting together ( as in the Prince who elopes with the milkmaid redefining the King's view of reality.)

Whatever the genre, the argument over the validity of the fallacy is in the plot, and never (ever) articulated in actual words, not exposition or dialogue.  The argument is articulated only in action, in change of situation.  Plot is not about "what happens" -- but about what the characters do.  What happens is the result of what the characters do.  The plot is what the characters do, and the story is all about how the results of those actions change the fallacy they hold most dear.

All my traditionally published novels are formulated on such "fallacies" that become entrenched in popular thinking, different fallacies for different times, and the shifting demographic served by the particular publishing company I was working for. 

Oddly, the Sime~Gen Series is based on a fallacy that hasn't yet gone out of fashion.  For the Sime~Gen videogame, though, we are adding another fallacy and setting it in the space age. 

Fallacies you find in general media always work very well for generating popular fiction.

I saw a factoid flick by me (while watching data feeds on my cell and flipping channels on the TV, so I don't know where this came from) -- that last minute deciders cast ballots on the basis of the TV commercials they had seen, believing those political ads, just the way Bernays predicted people would behave (way before such tech as TV ads existed).

Here's a quote from Part 1 of this series leading you to study this fellow:

--------QUOTE FROM PART 1----------
Here's a link to Wikipedia (incomplete article in need of fact-checking)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

-------------QUOTE--------------------------------
Edward Louis Bernays (November 22, 1891 – March 9, 1995) was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations".[1] He combined the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud.

He felt this manipulation was necessary in society, which he regarded as irrational and dangerous as a result of the 'herd instinct' that Trotter had described.[2] Adam Curtis's award-winning 2002 documentary for the BBC, The Century of the Self, pinpoints Bernays as the originator of modern public relations, and Bernays was named one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century by Life magazine.[3
---------------END QUOTE------------

Thus "Public Relations" is a field that grows out of one genius's deep rooted fear of the behavior of his fellow humans, and a terrible need to "control" that powerful and evil force called "humanity."

---------END QUOTE FROM PART 1 ----------

PUBLIC RELATIONS wielded by the invisible hand of power behind the throne could make a NIFTY reason for the CHANGE IN DEMOGRAPHICS in your built world.  It could also work as the source of the fallacy that binds the Hero to the Villain just as Bernays' purported belief that society was irrational and dangerous because of the "herd instinct" and therefore more evolved people must command the direction of the herd -- members of which can't be allowed to make individual decisions about the course of their own lives. 

One good fallacy to base fiction on might be a belief that Bernays was mentally ill, that society isn't irrational and dangerous and there is no herd instinct among humans.  But Bernays created the herds of humans and drove them insane.  That situation would make a nifty alien planet for your invading refugees to come from - landing on Earth to find the same nightmare situation in play, and changing the demographic by simply being here.

Finding, articulating, and challenging such fallacies is the main source of ALL science fiction. 

Here's a post from Facebook by David Gerrold, a master of this plotting technique.  Read what he wrote about our current shifting demographic and how that affects fiction audiences and see why you must explore the worlds he's created.  Remember, he broke into screenwriting at an early age with his first sale TROUBLE WITH TRIBBLES, an iconic Star Trek Episode, but went on to write some of the best, and most widely read novels in Science Fiction. 

----------POST ON FACEBOOK BY DAVID GERROLD ---

http://www.amazon.com/David-Gerrold/e/B000AQ1PQM/ is his author page on Amazon.  READ ALL HIS BOOKS!

-----------QUOTE FROM DAVID GERROLD----------
I haven't been reading a lot of science fiction lately, and I've skipped a lot of movies too. And it finally hit me after seeing Cloud Atlas what was bothering me.

I grew up in an age when science fiction movies were about vision and courage. Things To Come was about humanity triumphing over ignorance and leaping into space. Destination Moon and Conquest of Space were vivid predictions of what was possible. Forbidden Planet took us to far stars and 2001 was one of the great inspirational landmarks of the twentieth century. Star Trek, the original series, was about a future of exploration and partnership. All of these taken together said that human beings would survive our darker impulses, would learn how to live together in harmony, would assume the responsibilities of true sentience. And it's no coincidence that those stories helped motivate one of our grandest adventures -- the Apollo program that took us to the moon.

Today, too many books and movies and TV shows are about the failures of humanity. We see big impersonal cities or dystopic soul-crushing cities. We see failure and futility and hopelessness. We do not see people laughing, building, exploring, seeking, discovering, or rising to new heights -- no, we see them struggling for survival, squabbling with each other-- not uniting in common cause, not surviving as communities, but devolving into deranged and panic-stricken animals.

I know from personal experience that view of human nature is wrong. I've been at the center of a disaster and I watched as strangers came together to help each other, as neighbors gathered to make sure that everyone was safe and cared for.

I think that since the sixties, science fiction authors have become more and more overwhelmed by the future -- there's too much knowledge, too much research, too much technology for any one single human being to keep up. The "singularity" is crushing down on us even before it arrives. So it's easier to write about the collapse of civilization than to imagine a future where civilization has leapt to a new level.

But the history of our species is an astonishing chronicle of invention, innovation, and stubborn mean cussedness over the obstinacy of the physical universe. There is still so much we can be looking at, imagining, predicting, postulating, extrapolating, and describing so vividly that the reader will be certain we're time-travelers from the future. We have a whole solar system to explore. Getting into orbit, getting to the moon and Mars and the asteroids and the moons of the gas giants, all of those locales are opportunities for amazing tales of unknown possibilities.

This is my point. Everything in the world starts as a conversation. Everything. The conversation can be "I hate it when..." or "why can't we..." or "I wish it were possible to..." or "what if..." or even "that's odd..." -- but those conversations are the beginning of possibilities. Science fiction is about possibilities. It's the consideration of those possibilities that creates probability. And after probability, the next step is inevitability.

Science fiction is about the choices ahead of us. Every moment of every day, life is about choices -- not just the choice of the moment, but the results of that choice. Science fiction is about the results and the opportunity to make choices that will take us there. Science fiction is the conversation that illuminates the unknown landscapes of tomorrow.

That's the science fiction I want to read, that's the science fiction I want to see in the movies. Because science fiction is an opportunity to rekindle the enthusiasm for science as a world-changing adventure.
---------------END QUOTE---------

David -- being the genius I've always known he is -- nailed the core of the fallacy producing this crazy quilt of "results" -- elections with margins too narrow to reflect an actual, considered consensus.

The reason for this -- well, it's for fiction writers to speculate and write about, to turn the problem every which way and imagine different courses out of it, to find academic theories that account for it, to put American's peculiar constitution (peculiar in the sense of not being duplicated anywhere else in the world) into world-context, and human history.

Go out into the galaxy, find some aliens you invent, and explore what traits of human aggregate behavior are the source of this situation. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

The World's Last Night

So the world is going to end tomorrow. Or not.

As I understand the Mayan calendar kerfuffle, the whole thing was spawned by a misinterpretation of a single inscription. In fact, the fateful date simply marked the start of a new 394-year cycle. The USA WEEKEND magazine of December 7-9 had the cover caption “The End of the World Is Not Near” and an article in which several scientists debunk fears of imminent catastrophes such as the shifting of the planet’s magnetic poles or the Earth’s getting hit by an asteroid or comet anytime soon.

A couple of Sundays ago, our rector’s sermon began with the assurance that the world isn’t going to end this month. I felt like asking, “How do you know?” It’s almost impossible to prove a negative. However, the odds are against it.

In 1979, Isaac Asimov published a book called A CHOICE OF CATASTROPHES, exploring all the ways doom might befall the world as we know it. One might expect him to start with smaller hazards and work up, but he moves in the other direction. After a brief discussion of myths about the twilight of the gods and the destruction of the world, he begins with “Catastrophes of the First Class,” those such as entropy that involve the entire universe, then going through disasters that would affect the stars, the solar system, and Earth alone down to “Catastrophes of the Fifth Class,” which might destroy civilization but not wipe out humanity. He finishes with the disasters he thinks we have some chance of preventing. Like all of Asimov’s entertainingly lucid science writings, this book remains worth reading.

On the religious side of the question, C. S, Lewis wrote an essay titled “The World’s Last Night.” He reminds us that trying to predict the end times and Judgment Day is futile because we’re explicitly told we can’t foresee those events: “No one knows the day or the hour.” Therefore, we have a duty to be prepared at all times, not by obsessing over the imminent end, but by doing our appointed tasks to the best of our ability. When the Last Day arrives, Lewis says, “happy are those whom it finds labouring in their vocations.”

It’s a little like the advice in a recently popular country song on how to get maximum joy out of life: “Live like you were dying.”

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Plot Integration - Part 2: Fallacy As Theme

Last week we listed a number of prior posts that form the foundation of this advanced writing exercise of integrating two huge skill-sets, THEME and PLOT. 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-1-never-let.html

I pointed out the origin of PR (publicity, public relations, shaping "public" opinion) and how that science has been so effective in molding our current culture. 

In November 2012, I saw the following tweet on twitter:
"Common perspective in India: when something comes from the Internet, it's free of cost" #ebkstats @DigiBookWorld

Please also note this Guest Post on this blog:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/sharing-is-piracy.html

That "common perspective" concept is what I'm talking about here.  "if it's from the internet, it's free." is a fallacy for us and common sense for them. 

Remember our whole, long, discussion of "fallacy?" 
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/09/theme-worldbuilding-integraton-part-2.html

I saw a post on Facebook in December 2012 from a person talking to a professional writer.  The person wrote that during a bit of research on the Web, looking for a quote from a deceased writer's work, a "free download" pdf of the novel came up.  The researcher was utterly astonished that anyone could possibly think they were doing a Good Deed to post free downloads of books -- and went to find one to buy that would pay the estate properly. 

I'm astonished anyone is astonished that book piracy is now considered a Good Deed.  That's a cultural concept, and a fallacy -- study it because it's exactly what either binds a couple in Romance, or repels Soul Mates from each other.  Fallacies are wondrous sources of conflict for your novel plots because they are, inherently, the material of THEME.  Pick the right fallacy, and you've got Theme-Plot Integration that is effortless, seamless, and beautiful to behold.

I used the key concepts behind misnomers and fallacies in my Sime~Gen Novel, Unto Zeor, Forever - which just came out from audible.com and also has paper and ebook editions.




If you're going to write about Alien Romance, you've got to be able to straddle the rift illustrated by that "fallacy" that the internet is free, and "sharing" anything is a Good Deed.  You must be capable of writing  convincingly from each perspective in turn, then resolve the difference (not for yourself personally, but as your characters would resolve their problem).  You must reduce the chasm for your readers, so both parties in the argument can straddle that chasm and hold hands, and admit they are Soul Mates. 

You can learn to do this if you understand culture.

But last week, I didn't mention one item that I've talked about a lot in these posts, the study of what culture is. 

A writer needs to study the definition of "culture" (anthropological definition) until it becomes very clear where inside the writer's own mind "culture" resides and what precisely that "culture" bin inside the writer's mind currently contains (and where that content came from; what fallacies reside there).  Then the writer must study culture as it functions in a lot of people that writer knows -- writers being natural people-watchers, this study does not take a lot of discipline.  In fact, it's hard for a writer-type person to resist becoming obsessed with this study.

Beyond studying yourself and people you know very well, though, you must extend that study to the general public around you, and then to the whole world.

Why does a writer need a "feel" -- on a deep, subconscious level -- for culture in order to write hot romance?  Because the hottest of heats is generated where cultures conflict.

And anthropologists have identified "female culture" and "male culture" -- in fact, there's women's language and men's language.  Human cultures usually develop private ceremonials for men and for women separately, in addition to public events that involve both.  In modern America, you see that in house parties where somehow the women end up in one room (often the kitchen or back porch) while men end up clustered in another room, (often the parlor or living room). 

I'm currently reading a self-published mixed-genre SF/Romance with time travel jumbled in.  It's a relationship driven novel.  I should like it.  But the author appears to have skipped this step of studying culture until it's second-nature, then learning how to integrate that study into Theme-Plot integration.  The pieces of this novel just don't meet at the seams -- like a building that's been added-onto and the floors and walls miss the seam by a couple inches, disorienting the eye.

So the study of how Public Relations science is being employed by the Big Money to shape our culture is important to the SF/Romance fiction writer who needs to create verisimilitude.

It's also important to the futurologist who wants to worldbuild a background for a novel set in the future.  You must extrapolate, using "What if ...?"  "If only ..." and also "If this goes on ..." starting with trends today, and extending them along the path they are traveling.  Then find the forces (such as the subconscious conflicts in the minds of those allocating Big Money to PR thrusts) that will CHANGE that future course.

Here is one such present-time trend to work this exercise with.

--------------QUOTE---------------
Big Brands Are Pouring Money Into Their Own Custom News Sites

On top of their multi-million dollar advertising budgets, huge companies are now diving into an arena previously dominated by traditional media. They're producing videos, releasing interviews with top executives, and providing unique looks inside their organization on their own specialized websites.

It's a way to present a carefully crafted message to consumers, and change the way traditional media interacts with companies. Content marketing overall has become at least a $16.6 billion business, and these sites are taking a growing share. 

We spoke to Alexander Jutkowitz, the managing partner partner of Group SJR, a digital firm which helps run content sites for GE, Credit Suisse, Target, and Barneys about why companies are doing it.

Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Where did the idea come from?

There are a few trends in the marketplace or in the world that we know about. There's media fragmentation, there is a lot of content, but frankly not a lot of great content, and there are a lot of organizations that have incredible knowledge that does not on a regular basis see the light of day. 

If it does, it's in a traditional sort of marketing model, whether that's advertising or even broadcast advertising. It's hard to transmit a lot of knowledge in 30 and 60 second spots. Traditional communications have been a bit lackluster in that sense because it's all about clear promotional content, and not content that really impacts and transfers knowledge.

There is both an opportunity for a great organization to communicate and to trend, and to really have their knowledge impact the world.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-ge-target-and-credit-suisse-are-creating-content-2012-11#ixzz2BSOkdBII

-------------END QUOTE----------------

WRITERS REMEMBER!! "content" = "writing you can get paid for doing." 

I have recently seen tweets about how much a fiction writer makes.  It's less than minimum wage when you actually account for your time, and pay for all your expenses.  Finding ancillary sources of revenue you can tap using the same expensively-gained and maintained skills you use for fiction writing must be a part of your business plan as a self-employed writer. 

"Content" has value when it says something startling, something that stops the eye, baffles the mind, raises questions -- i.e. says something philosophically challenging to the reader. 

Where do you "get" the ability to listen to a business person (a publisher of a website, for example) say "I need suchandso" and just instantly come back with "How about this?" and provide what that content-publisher needs right now to attract eyeballs to the advertising on that website?

When the "this" that you propose turns out to go viral -- your employer asks, "How do you think of these things?" and you respond (having studied my posts here on Hollywood) "Oh, it just came to me." 

Why does it "just come to you?"  Very simple.  In a word, Philosophy.  Or, as writers refer to it, Theme. 

With your subconscious trained (hard) to be lean and strong in Philosophy, theme-plot integrated cultural statements "just come to you."  These vast ideas erupt in response to the vision of dollar-signs.  And that's just how it works. 

So the hours and hours you spend researching and learning the historical origins of PR allow you to understand how PR campaigns driven by the Big Money shape our ambient culture, but you don't get paid for those hours spent studying until you produce a piece of fiction that triggers that ambient culture into paying money to imbibe in your product. 

The entire concept of Love and Romance having some connection to "Marriage" has become a part of our culture as the result of a PR campaign.  (research that!)

So for our example in this study of Theme-Plot integration, we're looking at the broad subject of the "fallacy" and how it operates in the human mind, the "belief system" to shape our perception of reality.  Perception is more real to us than the objective reality itself. 

The residual results of any PR campaign can be found by listening for the phrase "they say."  Or "everybody knows."  Then watch the next generation of teens raised by those who know "they say."  Those new teens will not even question, but just know, what used to be a "they say."  It won't be "they" that say, but the teens themselves.  In fact, they may invent some word to describe that concept, thinking they originated the concept.  4-generations -- study the 4-generation span on these cultural beliefs, and learn to extrapolate them into the future.

This is how fallacies become bedrock cultural cornerstones never to be questioned.

Publishers perpetuate these fallacies by enshrining them in genre rules.  The Romance Genre (as well as Science Fiction itself) has fallen victim to this process. 

To illustrate how to investigate and then utilize an institutionalized fallacy to construct a theme-plot integrated story, we are studying the fallacy that Romance Is An Emergency. 

Maybe you don't think that's a fallacy.  It's OK - even true things can be treated as fallacy in fiction.  That process is the core of developing plot-worthy conflict. 

We left off last week with the following questions:

--------QUOTE------------
Why is Romance Genre singled out for scorn when all other fiction is even more unbelievable?

Romance Genre is special because everyone, in their heart of hearts, wants not just Romance, but entree into everlasting Love, solid and unbreakable Relationships, Family, enriched life.

Not only does everyone want it, everyone knows they are destined for it. 

Yet, time after time, in reality, they have had that promise of fulfillment snatched away.  The only possible psychological defense left is to believe staunchly that Happily Ever After is not possible.

Is Romance an Emergency?  When it happens, is it a life-or-death crisis in which one must drop everything and dash willy-nilly after the person who has evoked this vision of absolute fulfillment?

And if Romance is indeed an Emergency, then how should we treat it? 

How do we respond to Emergencies and Crises? 

Is there a malfunction in our society's training about how to respond to Emergencies and Crises?

Is our audience indoctrinated with some kind of fallacy that has warped our response to Emergencies? 

If so, what fallacy?  Where did it come from?  We, as writers, no doubt share that fallacy, so why bother to pinpoint it? 

The fallacy in our Emergency Response habits, if we can articulate it, can become our Theme, and the PINPOINTING of that fallacy  can become the plot of the breakout Romance that I've been talking about in this blog since I started looking for how Romance Genre can achieve the respect it deserves. 

---------END QUOTE-----------

The thesis I put forward last week is that Romance stories written as if falling in love is an emergency imbue the whole genre with the aura of a scam.  Scam artists use emergencies as a means of using their mark's greatest strengths (in the case of Romance, it's usually Trust) against them.

So when a Romance telegraphs that the "ending" -- the destination for this couple's relationship -- is HEA, or Happily Ever After, it is concurrently telegraphing that the emotional payoff of reading this novel will be unending pain -- it will evoke real world loss and real world hopelessness if you "buy into" the premise.

So that raises the two questions: a) is Romance an Emergency, and b) Is there something wrong with how we respond (emotionally) to emergencies?

Well, I have of course evolved my own answers to those questions.  Think yours through before reading further here. 

a) No, Romance is not an Emergency.
b) Yes, our culture has conditioned us via fallacy inculcation to respond to emergencies incorrectly.  The conditioning is so deep (via PR or Propaganda that I mentioned last week, a psychological Judo) that we can not find that fallacy to correct it. 

Those are my answers.  What good can my answers do you?  None.  None whatsoever.

But here is something that might give you a handle on how to construct your own novel about Romance. 

I will lay out my "work" (as in algebra, a derivation) so you can follow along and substitute your own reasoning point by point.  Again, my answers are of no value to you, but my system of reasoning through this problem might be.

Here's how it goes.

a) Romance is not an Emergency

Romance, usually arriving during a major transit of Neptune, is a matter of the Soul.  In fact, life itself -- existence on this material plane -- is really an adventure the Soul is taking, a dip into "life" to do a job.  It's a little like being in the armed services and being sent "abroad" to a theater where (if there's a war, or even if there is no actual war) the action is.

We come into this life to accomplish something, maybe more than one thing per lifetime.  There is a goal to our personal existence which is only about our own personal Soul -- and simultaneously that goal contributes to a larger job, known in the Occultist studies as The Great Work, a job which G-d created us to do.  Kabbalists identify that goal as making in this world a dwelling place for G-d, and that place is inside what they term your "Heart" -- not so much the physical organ as a level of being which powers your existence.  Very mystical stuff.

For the more highly evolved souls, Neptune transits bring prophecy, glimpses of the real reality underlying our reality, the truth behind the facts.  For the rest of us, Neptune drapes the world in a dense fog of wish-fulfillment fantasy, distortion, misunderstanding, (sometimes lies told or believed), or possibly of idealism, and very likely even a close encounter of the third kind with Religion, faith, belief in the impossible.

Bottom line: Neptune transits = Confusion

But during that state of confusion -- and in a lifetime, it's very probable you will experience many different sorts of Neptune transits that blur the world -- during that state of confusion is when Romance erupts into Life.

No wonder people marry the wrong person -- in a couple years, when the transit wears off, the hard edges of reality define the Relationship and it is no longer an Ideal.  Under Neptune, people marry to "rescue" (as in reform an alcoholic) and get trapped in the fog of co-dependency.

But for the more mature Souls, that "wrong person" ultimately turns out to be the right one, the most solid and dependable Relationship, the true Soul-Mate.

A Soul-Mate Relationship that arrives outside the window of a Neptune Transit doesn't begin with what is normally recognized as Romance. 

So, if the arriving Other is a true Soul Mate and this Relationship (whatever its form) is what this life is really about, then there's no way out of it.  The pairing will fasten down hard, and there can be no getting away from each other.  (as mentioned last week, Ahab and his whale, and Helen of Troy).

In that case, the arrival of that Other into your life is no emergency.  The Relationship will procede to Bonding.  You have only to choose (G-d endows us with Free Will) and accept.  Some call it karma.  If it doesn't crystallize in this life, no emergency -- next life will be soon enough. 

If this Other is not the true Soul Mate -- then nothing can be lost if the Other drifts away. 

So if there does exist such a thing as a Happily Ever After with a Soulmate, then that is the inevitable consequence of living well -- even if not in this lifetime.  Not everyone pairs in every lifetime.  The arrival of a Soulmate (even if not for the first time) is always exciting, energizing, riveting attention, consuming and delightful -- of highest priority -- but, it's not an emergency.

The principle is that what belongs to you is yours.  It's part of you.  You can't lose it and it can't be taken away from you (for long). 

b) Yes, our culture has conditioned us via fallacy inculcation to respond to emergencies incorrectly.

This is the core of the theme.  The Soul-Mate concept leading to the Happily Ever After is the signature of the Romance Genre, so it's not something we can challenge or alter, and in truth it is not the source of the Romance Genre being scorned.

So let's search for the fallacy in the way we respond to emergencies. 

Any soul-mate story's worldbuilding has to include some paranormal aspect, some presence or evidence of a G-d driven universe, because the very concept "soul" is paranormal by definition. 

In a universe with no G-d presence, how could you define Soul, the immortal spark of God-breath that energizes you and gives you stark individuality?  All Romance is set in a G-d driven universe, even when the Romantic liaison is just Happily For Now. 

So here we challenge the way we meet emergencies. 

Here's how it's done at the pinnacle of our society, out in public, by the public servants.  Here's the "model" we grew up seeing on TV News, and now all over the internet whenever an emergency happens.

-------------quote--------
DHS moves to allow oil tankers in Northeast to ease fuel shortage

Published November 02, 2012

Associated Press

The Department of Homeland Security is temporarily waiving some maritime rules to allow foreign oil tankers coming from the Gulf of Mexico to enter Northeastern ports.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says she is waiving the Jones Act, which prohibits international cargo ships from transporting oil between U.S. ports , until Nov. 13.

The rule is being temporarily waived to help ease the fuel shortage in the Northeast in the wake of Superstorm Sandy.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/11/02/dhs-moves-to-allow-oil-tankers-in-northeast-to-ease-fuel-shortage
---------------end quote ----------

And another Hurricane Sandy aftermath story from the news:

-------QUOTE-----------
‘No Red Tape’? New Jersey Turns Away Non-union Relief Crews
Posted on November 2, 2012

How desperate is hurricane-ravaged New Jersey? Not desperate enough to suspend a union monopoly that keeps the state in the bottom ten states for economic competitiveness (and #48 for business friendliness). Relief crews from Alabama who were specifically called to New Jersey found themselves diverted to Long Island, NY after they arrived because they use non-union labor. Alabama is a right-to-work state.

WAFF-TV of Hunstville, AL reports:

Crews from Huntsville, as well as Decatur Utilities and Joe Wheeler out of Trinity headed up there this week, but Derrick Moore, one of the Decatur workers, said they were told by crews in New Jersey that they can’t do any work there since they’re not union employees….

Understandably, Moore said they’re frustrated being told “thanks, but no thanks.”

With so much at stake–and lives still in danger–it would seem logical to tell special interests to step aside.

On Wednesday, while visiting cleanup efforts in New Jersey in the company of Gov. Chris Christie, President Barack Obama vowed: “We are not going to tolerate red tape, we are not going to tolerate bureaucracy.”

WAFF-TV: News, Weather and Sports for Huntsville, AL

Read more: http://conservativebyte.com/2012/11/no-red-tape-new-jersey-turns-away-non-union-relief-crews/#ixzz2B5Ff2JkS
---------END QUOTE -------------

It's this way with ALL our laws now, all the "rules" -- all the "regulations."

And it's the way we live our everyday lives under the rules and regulations of societal behavior.

In an Emergency, it's then OK -- in fact required -- to throw the rules and regulations out, to CUT THE RED TAPE.

In fact, after suffering under some ridiculous rule, we consciously or subconsciously create emergencies so we CAN toss the pesky rule out.

The fallacy?  That rules, regulations and laws are supposed to be for NORMAL TIMES. 

Do an ALTERNATE UNIVERSE worldbuilding exercise with that idea.

What would an urban fantasy set in "today" but in an alternate world be like if in that world the fallacy that laws exist for the purpose of defining and constraining normal, everyday behavior had never taken root?

What if the only laws on the books were those to be obeyed in emergencies?

Take that as your exercise for this week.

If you need a SETTING to work out a "CUT THE RED TAPE" fallacy/Romance plot, here's one that works with a natural inevitability:

 http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/15/us-edisonmission-bankruptcy-idUSBRE8BE02O20121215

Next week we'll continue exploring how to extract a theme from commonly believed fallacies.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

"Sharing" is Piracy

Too many tech savvy people who ought to know better appear to be constructing new business models based on the assumption that it is legitimate and innovative to provide ways for "readers" to "share" ebooks, or links to where ebooks are stored.

They are mistaken. If they believe that anyone may lend and ebook to a friend simply because lending takes place on Amazon, and file transfers take place via Drop Box and its ilk, they are fooling themselves and their investors and customers.

Amazon pays something like a 70% rate to publishers who agree that an ebook may have "Lending Enabled", and they pay approximately 35% to publishers who do not wish "Lending" to be available. When an e-book is loaned, the original purchaser (who is actually a licensee, not an owner) does not have access to their ebook. The loan is of limited duration, and when the loan expires, the borrower loses access to the ebook.

Marilynn Byerly has graciously consented to share her articles on copyright.

http://mbyerly.blogspot.com/2009/04/first-sale-doctrine-and-ebooks.html

Click on the "copyright" label for more info on various copyright issues.

As always, anyone here may use my articles on copyright at their own sites or blogs or whatever.

Marilynn Byerly

http://mbyerly.blogspot.com/
http://marilynnbyerly.com

Socially Assistive Robots

More about “socially assistive robots”: Here’s an article about a robot named Bandit that helps with rehab for stroke patients. A robot never gets tired or grumpy, and the fun of playing with it can encourage patients to persevere with demanding exercises that would otherwise get tedious:

Socially Assistive Robots

This more detailed article from three years ago discusses how robots are being taught not only to “see” and evaluate facial expressions but to react appropriately to sounds, heart rate, and even body heat:

Service Robots

Given that some people treat their Roomba robotic vacuum cleaners like pets, users tend to respond even more positively to devices that look and act sort of human. But not too much—these devices still have to avoid the “uncanny valley.” For example, autistic children prefer Kaspar, which looks like the conventional stereotype of a robot, over more human-like, doll-type androids.

Personal care robots as a concept are far from new in science fiction, of course. Remember Ray Bradbury’s story about a grandmother robot bought by a widowed father to care for his children, “I Sing the Body Electric”? They grow to love “her” as much as a flesh-and-blood caretaker. One unhappy little girl comes to see her as even better than a “real” granny because they can’t lose her to death.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Plot Integration - Part 1: Never Let A Good Emergency Go To Waste

So we continue to practice walking and chewing gum at the same time.  All of these posts focus on the nitty gritty of the craft of writing, with special emphasis on the specific challenges facing a writer who is combining Science Fiction or Paranormal with Romance of any type. 

I specialize in the relationship driven plot, (not always sexual or even romantic, as there was no romance between Ahab and the Whale!), but my own favorite type of story is Romance! 

Romance plots don't necessarily exclude war.  Do remember Helen of Troy!  And thinking of Helen of Troy, do remember that the entire situation of Helen of Troy was a blend of politics and religion, just as I have been discussing in the (so-far) 9 part series titled Worldbuilding With Fire And Ice.

So traditionally, from its very inception, the Romance genre has always included not only combat in all forms, but also the paranormal.  It's not like we're inventing a new genre.  It's more like we're teaching the publishing industry that we know how to turn out a great novel. 

We've looked at how to recognize, choose and structure theme, and how to tell theme apart from plot -- how to dissect out the independent variables within a completed novel.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-to-learn-to-use-theme-as-art.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/shifting-pov.html
And a vocabulary lesson on how I use the words "plot" and "story" to distinguish the moving parts of a novel or screenplay.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/plot-vs-story.html

And here's one that has links leading back deeper into the posts on individual skills involved in crafting a plausible romance (for readers who don't believe that Happily Ever After is a point that real people in real life can achieve.)

Believing in Happily Ever After Part 4: Nesting Huge Themes Inside Each Other
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/10/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-4.html

Here are links to series of posts - they contain links to their previous parts. 

Here are links to 9 posts on "worldbuilding" -- a vast subject we aren't finished with yet (previous parts are linked in the last part).

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/10/worldbuilding-with-fire-and-ice-part-9.html

And here is a series about Theme-Worldbuilding integration:

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

These first 4 parts on theme-worldbuilding integration focus on the current issue of bullying in our society, especially among children, and what that means in terms of targeting a readership.

For writers working with paranormal elements, here's a post on the outer-reaches of the philosophical:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/05/theme-element-giving-and-receiving.html

And one specifically on the use of theme in Romance.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-to-use-theme-in-writing-romance.html

Assuming you have been following along through these posts, we're now ready to look at some of the raw material of our current society's unconscious philosophical assumptions which can easily be dissected into fallacies.  Discovering and revealing a logical fallacy (whether it is, or is not true!) in another person's thinking processes is one very powerful way to discombobulate and thus manipulate another person into doing or saying something they will later regret.

LATER REGRETS are the sum and substance of great romance -- once burned, twice wary.

Because our current culture is rooted in a plethora of fallacies, writers have a vast and rich array of materials to choose from, all of which lend themselves to the hottest romance plots.

Do you LOVE people who have a habit of pointing out dire errors in your thinking that undermine your conclusions?  Are you attracted to them?  Fatally, perhaps?

Do you come to trust someone who has proven you wrong on a number of occasions, so that when an emergency erupts you no longer trust your own instant assessment of what to do about it?

How many times do you have to be proven wrong before you become  convinced the prover is always right?  When do you surrender your personal sovereignty to another person's judgment?

Were you raised by parents who kept telling you that you had bad judgment and made bad choices?

Did you actually make any choices as a teen that you later regretted and came to understand as bad judgment? 

Or was your judgment sound, but your premise fallacious?  Do you trust your judgment now?

Are you a good judge of character? 

Did you pick the right Presidential Candidate based on sterling character traits?

Have you ever discovered a fallacy in your own reasoning? 

If you can't find an instance to relate to, just think back over all the TV commercials you've seen for products, and the money you've wasted on things that don't work as advertised.  That happens because you fail to see the fallacy in the commercial.

TV commercials are structured by a) LAWYERS (commercials can't ever say things that the company can be sued for -- they can lie, but the law allows lies) and b) MARKETERS who specialize in manipulating behavior of large groups.

To see what I'm saying here about legal-lies, read this post:
November 6, 2012  HOW TO WRITE LIAR DIALOGUE
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/11/dialogue-part-5-how-to-write-liar.html

To see what I'm talking about for MARKETERS see this post on the Overton Window phenomenon and marketing.  Even Presidential campaigns are now woven of the substance of this science.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/10/glenn-beck-didnt-invent-overton-window.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/01/failure-of-imagination-part-4-teasing.html

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

The creation of a popularizable "image" is often called "spin doctoring."  The creation of a character is a very similar procedure, alarming as that may seem.

These two disciplines combine to construct a funnel that sucks the customer's mind into a "world" they have "built" to house their fictional construct.

When it's done well, this technique can convince such a large percentage of viewers that some fallacious premise is true -- when it is not, and the authors of the commercial know it's not.

One such premise is that "cotton" is cooler to wear than artificial fibers.  The conviction that "science" shows it to be true has been driven so deep into the subconscious that people can verify this "fact" experimentally.  The subjective impression of coolness from cotton will conform to the assumption that it must be so.  Fact is, that "science" was commissioned by the cotton industry to prove that it's true because cotton was being driven from the market by competing fibers.

In our current culture, Science has become our "god."  Science is infallible (science says global warming is man-made so it's heresy to entertain the notion that this isn't yet proven).  Gods are infallible, and must be worshiped with out a doubt.  That need to worship something infallible is an inherent trait of human nature.  Read up on The Overton Window and all the science of Public Relations.

Here's a link to Wikipedia (incomplete article in need of fact-checking)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

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Edward Louis Bernays (November 22, 1891 – March 9, 1995) was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations".[1] He combined the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud.

He felt this manipulation was necessary in society, which he regarded as irrational and dangerous as a result of the 'herd instinct' that Trotter had described.[2] Adam Curtis's award-winning 2002 documentary for the BBC, The Century of the Self, pinpoints Bernays as the originator of modern public relations, and Bernays was named one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century by Life magazine.[3
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Thus "Public Relations" is a field that grows out of one genius's deep rooted fear of the behavior of his fellow humans, and a terrible need to "control" that powerful and evil force called "humanity."

That is only one example of how active and powerful a well-driven fallacy can be in shaping subjective reality. 

But take a long view perspective on how Public Relations, Advertising, Spin Doctoring, and political campaigning tropes have shaped our current social reality, then take a long look at Bernays' life story.  You will see a real-world illustration of what I've been talking about in these posts -- the way the internal psychological circuitry of the main-character's mind projects that character's external reality, shapes his adversaries, and sets up the drama and its resolution. 

The writer must always create the Villain out of the substance of the Hero's internal conflict.  Or, you can do it the other way around, and create the Hero out of the Villain's inner problem.  However you go about doing it, the end product must show a match between the two of the story won't be plausible. 

One reason Romance as a genre has such a bad reputation is that Love is portrayed as "inexplicable."  It is inexplicable to the lovers!  But in a piece of fiction, it must be explicable if not explained. 

In a Romance, the two characters who fall in love are the "adversaries" or two poles of the conflict.  It's called "the battle of the sexes" for a reason, and all the "game" analogies also apply for that same reason -- the two are a pair, like Ahab and the Whale, or Bernays and The Public. 

Do that to a large enough group of people and they influence each other's solemn beliefs (the "herd instinct" referred to in that quote), and like "cotton is always the coolest fiber" popular beliefs become tangible reality.

Hence we have today's society composed of one "herd" that is absolutely convinced there is not and can never be such a thing as Happily Ever After and another herd (to which I belong) convinced that Happily Ever After is life's destination.

Here are some posts where we discussed and defined these two herds and how one individual reader can belong to either or both at any given moment.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/02/happily-ever-after.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/11/astrology-just-for-writers-part-11.html

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

Can a member of one herd join another?

I think so, but it's such a rare and improbable occurrence it makes a story!

In many instances in the above linked posts, I have noted that one reason the Romance genre is not given a lot of respect is that "Falling In Love" is always treated as an Emergency. 

Why would that concept be a source of scorn for Romance?

Here's the most often quoted instance of this concept in the media:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_said_never_let_a_good_emergency_go_to_waste

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 Rahm Israel Emanuel saying "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."
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What exactly is being utilized in this principle?

The principle is the Overton Window -- which is the title of a novel by Glenn Beck about a PR firm and various characters involved in a PR project utilizing the concept Beck did not invent called The Overton Window.  An explanation of all that and what it has to do with learning to write is in this post which I mentioned above:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/10/glenn-beck-didnt-invent-overton-window.html

This principle of using emergencies to make people do things which are against a) their nature, b) their better judgment, c) their true Values, d) their religion or even e) are suicidal is a tool of the grifter, the confidence man, the scam artist.

It is a basic discovery at the root of the science of Public Relations or more accurately, Propaganda. 

It is a TRICK - a way of turning an adversaries strengths against them so they kill themselves and you don't have to get your hands dirty. 

That's why the genre's habit of portraying ROMANCE as an EMERGENCY -- "drop everything and pursue this one true love, and if that one true love gets away, life is over forever, so nothing you've dropped would ever be worth anything anyway" -- is viewed as a TRICK and instantly labeled as "impossible."  Why?  Because "emergencies" area always "tricks." 

Every other time in life's experience in the real world that people have dared to believe in Happily Ever After, it always turns out to be an instance of being fooled by a grifter.  So they don't believe it in fiction, and want nothing to do with such.

Why is Romance Genre singled out for scorn when all other fiction is even more unbelievable?

Romance Genre is special because everyone, in their heart of hearts, wants not just Romance, but entre into everlasting Love, solid and unbreakable Relationships, Family, enriched life.

Not only does everyone want it, everyone knows they are destined for it. 

Yet, time after time, in reality, they have had that promise of fulfillment snatched away.  The only possible psychological defense left is to believe staunchly that Happily Ever After is not possible.

Is Romance an Emergency?  When it happens, is it a life-or-death crisis in which one must drop everything and dash willy-nilly after the person who has evoked this vision of absolute fulfillment?

And if Romance is indeed an Emergency, then how should we treat it? 

How do we respond to Emergencies and Crises? 

Is there a malfunction in our society's training about how to respond to Emergencies and Crises?

Is our audience indoctrinated with some kind of fallacy that has warped our response to Emergencies? 

If so, what fallacy?  Where did it come from?  We, as writers, no doubt share that fallacy, so why bother to pinpoint it? 

The fallacy in our Emergency Response habits, if we can articulate it, can become our Theme, and the PINPOINTING of that fallacy  can become the plot of the breakout Romance that I've been talking about in this blog since I started looking for how Romance Genre can achieve the respect it deserves. 

We'll kick around some of these questions in Theme-Plot Integration: Part 2 Fallacy as Theme

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com