Depiction Part 25 - Depicting Hatred

Depiction

Part 25

Depicting Hatred

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Index to Depiction Series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

In Part 28, we looked at the sweeping, long wave of change in science fiction and fantasy genres in how Aliens and Supernatural Beings are depicted, and noted how one crude but unmistakable method of labeling a villain is to tell rather than show.  Just make him/her say "...and then I'll rule, forever!" preferably with venom and triumph gleaming.

Villains aspire to RULE.  That's how you know they are villains.

Did the Lone Ranger yearn to rule?  Does Superman want to rule Earth forever?  Did Captain Kirk secretly politic his way to Admiral status so he could step up to rule the Federation?

The Hero has no interest in Ruling.

The Villain wants nothing else but to Rule.

What was it in the character of The Evil Queen (in the TV Series Once Upon A Time) that changed to make her not-evil-anymore?

https://www.amazon.com/Once-Upon-Time-Complete-Season/dp/B01E7XSDOK/

When she was Evil Queen, she wanted to RULE - when she became Good, she did not hurt people to make them knuckle under.  She didn't steal hearts and put them in boxes anymore.  That Heart-Stealing bit is a graphic (show don't tell) of a very abstract set of concepts, and it is brilliantly done.

Do humans (maybe Aliens, too?) yearn to Rule people because they Hate those people?

Or is there something more complicated going on?

Remember, the master theme of Romance is Love Conquers All.

In the TV Series Once Upon A Time, they use True Love's Kiss to overcome impossible obstacles of magical origin.  True Love's Kiss undoes the most powerful spell.

All Romance is about how Love Conquers All -- so it is up to the writer to create a formidable obstacle for Love to overcome.

One formidable obstacle that has been the plot generating conflict in many of the very best Romances (especially in the Science Fiction or Paranormal Romance) is Hatred.

When the Couple first meets, it is Hate At First Sight.  The story experience transforms that hate into love as a series of misunderstandings is unraveled, and the depths of human (and/or non-human) psychology are penetrated.  Many of the very best Romances flip Hate into Love.

Love is generally considered the only thing that can dispel Hatred.

There are many psychological studies of affinity and aversion that can be used to plot such a Romance, so the more widely you read, the better you will write.

December 2016, I found an article in Slate
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/12/garry_kasparov_on_why_vladimir_putin_hates_chess.html

This article, Why Dictators Hate Chess, begs to be studied by those puzzling over the question posed in Depiction Part 28 - why do villains yearn to rule forever?  Or rule at all, for that matter?  Heros don't yearn to rule - why do villains?  What has Ruling to do with Love and Hate?

Notice that Love, Hate - and even Rule - are abstract concepts.  Remember that a stage play, TV Series or Movie is a "story in pictures."  The task of "Depicting" hatred is the task of making an emotion visible and concrete.  So a writer of Romance has to study Hate very closely to understand what the readership will interpret as "That One Is The Villain."  Or "That One Is The Obstacle Love Must Conquer."

Make the readers root for the Villain to melt in the bright shaft of love-shine, and you have a winner.   This works even in all the other genres.  See why every novel needs a love story.

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

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

That article in Slate is an interview with the former world chess champion, Garry Kasparov, talking about Vladimir Putin and dictators (rulers) in general.

Note: the USA has a President, not a King, because a President does not rule and has no power to rule (if he obeys the law).  The USA does not have a "regime" and Presidents do not "come to power."  This is because a President has no power; voters do.

Presidents serve not as decision makers but as managers who create policies to carry out instructions of voters.  Presidents are supposed to do what the the majority of voters elected them to do.  Kings rule.  Rule means make others do what you want, whether they want to or not.

"Want" is an emotion, and like Love, Hate, is very abstract.  The writer's job is to make it concrete, a story in pictures depicted in text, in symbols.

Here is Part 4 of the Theme-Symbolism series with links to previous parts.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/01/theme-symbolism-integration-part-4-how.html

Here is a quote from the article in Slate:

Why Dictators Hate Chess
Garry Kasparov on Vladimir Putin’s meddling and America’s response.
By Jacob Weisberg

---------quote--------------
Interviewer: That also sounded to me like a chess player’s analysis. You’re the greatest chess player ever. Is Putin playing chess, or is he playing a different game?

Kasparov: No, I always wanted to defend the integrity of my game—when people said, Oh, Putin played chess, Obama played checkers. Putin, as with every dictator, hates chess because chess is a strategic game which is 100 percent transparent. I know what are available resources for me and what kind of resources could be mobilized by my opponent. Of course, I don’t know what my opponent thinks about strategy and tactics, but at least I know what kind of resources available to you cause damage to me.

Dictators hate transparency and Putin feels much more comfortable playing a game that I would rather call geopolitical poker. In poker, you know, you can win having a very weak hand, provided you have enough cash to raise the stakes—and also, if you have a strong nerve, to bluff. Putin kept bluffing. He could see his geopolitical opponents—the leaders of the free world—folding cards, one after another. For me, the crucial moment where Putin decided that he could do whatever was Obama’s decision not to enforce the infamous red line in Syria.

---------end quote-------------

What if this "game" were being played out on a Galactic canvas?  What if the Putin-Character were non-human, playing against Earth?

How would humans assess the Character of a Galactic Authority that was not "transparent."  What if that Authority abhorred transparency, but had no desire to "Rule" Earth or anything else?  Would the veil of mystery be taken as Villainy?

Is Kasparov's assessment of Dictators hating Chess universally valid, or is it a cultural trait that might not turn up everywhere?

Is the burning desire to Rule a certain sign of villainy?  Or is that a human thing?

It may be that wherever humans are involved, Ruling = Villainy.  Or put another way, absolute power corrupts absolutely.  No human is fit to exercise rule over another.  Maybe that's not universally true for non-human people -- and therein lies a complex tale.

For humans, though, the it certainly seems that the ambition to Rule, to Conquer and to Win Ruler-ship, is innate in our biology.

See Part 19 and Part 21 of Depicting which discusses how that innate human goal of Ruler-ship is related to Testosterone:

Part 19 - Depicting the Married Hunk With Children (especially daughters) (Testosterone effect)
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/11/depiction-part-19-depicting-married.html

Part 21 - Depicting Alien History (Testosterone revisited)
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/11/depiction-part-21-depicting-alien.html

This new scientific research on testosterone psychoactive dimension tells us a lot about why humanity self-organizes into hierarchy -- or behind a Leader -- or in allegiance to a King.

When beaten, a man knuckles under to his ruler -- not from cultural custom but from the abating of the biological urge to conquer.  When raising his own children, the man's need to take insane risks abates -- we call it maturity.

Not everyone experiences the urge to Rule in equal degrees, but don't forget women also have a need to dominate, to prevail, to get things to go their own way.  If that requires Ruling, then Rule She Shall, and she shall enjoy the heck out of it, too.

So humans are hard-wired to compete for Rulership, and nobody really wants their Rule to be temporary -- so Rule Forever is an innate goal, set in our genes.

Consider, Happily Ever After is the innate goal of Romance.  After What?  After Love Conquers All.

Conquers being the Keyword to ponder, along with "ever after" (i.e. forever).

Both the Villain's Quest and the Lovelorn's Quest are searches for a definitive, permanent, eternal solution to the problem.

The human male seeks to conquer a female.  The language of sexuality is fraught with the language of war, conquering, taking, having, getting.  The language of Romance is about convincing, wooing, maybe fooling, seducing.  The language of Love combines the two.

Love is about conflict, and the satisfactory and permanent settlement of that conflict.

It has been widely proposed that the opposite of Love is not Hate but Indifference.

Love manifests as an affinity, gravitating together, combining.

Hate manifests as a bond, focusing attention, defining goals according to the hated person -- to vanquish that hated person, to conquer or thwart or neutralize that hated and rejected person.  Where this is active hatred, there is no fleeing or giving up everything to get away.  Fear causes flight.  Hatred binds.

Like Love, Hatred comes in thousands of styles and flavors as well as degrees of visibility.  Sometimes a person who smolders with hatred doesn't even know the feeling is hatred.

Hate comes in a variety called Baseless Hatred -- where the feeling of being locked in a fight to the death is not caused by the person or situation that is ostensibly hated.  There is no objective real-world reason for the feeling, but that feeling dominates and motivates, oblitterating all other purposes in life.  Baseless Hatred very easily becomes an obsession detached from all rationality.

People blame external events, other people, random occurrances and situations for their emotions.  Not all humans do that, but ways of avoiding it are absorbed by children before they can talk.  Where emotions lie on the spectrum of values is a cultural norm, and as far as we now know, not biological in origin.

Baseless Hatred makes a good story dynamic for the Horror Genre, and for Action Genre where the point of the novel is to depict a righteous and sanctioned killing.  This is the sort of vanquishing you often see in videogames where you just "kill" anything that gets in your way.

Monsters are motivated by Baseless Hatred.

When writing a "slay the monster" story, you don't have to provide a comprehensible motive for the monster.  Nothing the hero did or said has anything to do with why the monster is fixated on killing the hero.  And the Hero doesn't hate the monster.

The monster has no power over the Hero, so the Hero does not hate the monster.  The monster is just a "force of nature" - a formidable adversary bent on destruction.

The adversary motivated by Baseless Hatred makes a great plot element for Action or Horror genre, but not for Romance.

Baseless Hatred is conquered by Love, but not love of the Monster.  Love conquers the Monster by binding the humans into an unbreakable defensive wall.  The love of one human for another conquers the Monster.

Once fully consumed by Baseless Hatred, the Monster is irredeemable, but harmless to those who Love.  Many good Love Stories revolve around rescuing someone from going down the path of Baseless Hatred.  The rescue process resembles the AA 12 step program, or deprogramming someone from a Cult. Those make very potent novels, but rarely produce the best of Romance.

Hatred that is based in reality, in the actions and situations that exist in truth, and that readers can recognize as legitimate causes for hatred, provides a much wider and richer spectrum of plots and stories for Romance writers.

The classic, as mentioned previously, is Hate At First Sight that eventually turns to True Love.

In real life, very often we hate that which has power over us.  Love has that kind of power, the power to change our very identity, or sense of self.

When you fall in love, you literally become someone new, someone different.

Humans do fear change, and do fear anything with the power to change them -- hence our fascination with werewolves and shapechangers.  Can you "change" so radically and still be you?

We also love novels about how Love At First Sight turns to hatred -- the escape from the clutches of a man you have given yourself to, then discovered he's Bluebeard incarnate.

So the opposite of Love is Indifference -- not feeling any bond at all.

So to depict hate, make sure your Character is deeply bonded, enthralled, captivated, obsessed with the object of hatred.

Depict a cause or basis for that hatred -- and ask what this Character would accept as proof that this "cause" is actually not the problem at all -- that what he/she thought was true is in fact not true.  You can't do that with Baseless Hatred -- and you can identify baseless hatred by the non-falsifyable nature of it.  Nothing would be a convincing proof that this is not a real source of the problem.

If you're writing Alien Romance, and you want to drive your plot with hate, then consider what makes humans hate (for cause).  Build Aliens who are different in that regard.

Consider the two posts on Testosterone in this Depiction Series.  A human who is beaten, vanquished, defeated utterly, will lose the desire to hurl himself against the one who defeated him, and will be generally less aggressive.

Among humans, the winner "rules" - the loser knuckles under.  Now, if the defeat is not utterly complete, the loser may smolder with hatred, and eventually burst into rebellion.

Is that how it works among your Aliens?

We hate that which rules us - (even sometimes if what rules us is Love!).  We just purely hate to "be ruled" -- whether it is forever or not.

Anyone who rules is justifiably hated.

Rulership is hated.  It is human to hate having free will thwarted by the will of another.

The Hero knows this, and has no desire to be hated, thus no interest in ruling.

What if Aliens ruled all Earth?  Would the Hero rebel?  Or would the behavior of the ruling aliens make a difference?

Hate is a bond comparable to Love -- maybe a little less binding, for Love Conquers All.

To depict Hate, don't tell the reader this Character hates that Character.  Don't put the word "hate" in dialogue.  If someone says out loud, "I hate you," you never believe it.  Teens hate their parents -- right?  How many times do they say it?  How many parents believe it?

To depict hate, show the Character behaving in opposition to what the Character sees as pure Evil, a force loose in the world that must be destroyed, something that must be conquered.  Show the Character choosing death rather than submission.  The reader will hate that which oppresses that Character.

It's not that simple, of course.  It is never simple where humans are involved.

Start into the messy tangle of Character Motivation by finding the target of the hatred, and decide if it is Baseless Hatred or hatred for just cause.  Then introduce Love into the dynamic to overcome the hatred.

Do your Characters hate that which they resent?  Do they hate that which has power and/or Authority over them?  Do they hate that which they are jealous of?  Or do they hate that which they admire?  Do they see Love as a threat because Love does conquer all?  Do they hate God because God has betrayed them by ignoring their entreaties because Ultimate Power should always be kind?  If they gain power, do they use it for kindness?  Do they hate kindness?

It seems to be in our biology to sacrifice everything to Rule, to be sovereign, to admit nothing in power over us.  And it seems we hate anything that has power over us.  But just as children need the discipline of their parents, so do we knuckle under to a Ruler, to a dominant power.  So it is for humans -- are we a special case in the Galaxy?  Ancient Wisdom indicates there are ways for the human spirit to tame the animal spirit -- the ways of Love.

These emotions drive the Story, and the reasons for the emotions drive the Plot.  We have discussed theme and plot at length previously.

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/index-post-to-art-and-craft-of-story.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-2-master.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Death of a Life-Saver

Weird-bearded men, some with black-banded battle braided hair and thick chains hanging from their waists and pockets, stood silently in a semi-circle on the beach with their mates, their heavy "bovver" boots planted firmly on the sifted white sand, facing into the stiff onshore breeze and the wind-whipped rising tide.

A ceremony was about to begin. Curious, I joined the back of the crowd.

A man in tartan played a familar hymn on the mournful bagpipes. An all-male team of rescue-swimmers, bare footed, wearing dark boardies and sash patterned tops stood with their hands folded like soccer goalies stood at a tangent to the sea. With them stood double ranks of men in dark uniform tracksuits.

There was one easel holding red and white flowers in the lozenge shape of a red cross. At the water's edge was a pure white surf boat, broad, shallow, with the prow pointing inland and the blade of one oar resting on the side.  Midway between the rising tide and the assembly was a lone, freshly painted, orange baywatcher's high chair flanked on each side by two rescue floats. A furled flag lay across the seat.

A man read the words of the seaman's hymn "For Those In Peril On The Sea" as a prayer. Several people spoke into a hand held microphone and into the wind. The wind carried many of the words away, but it became clear that this was a funeral service for a lifeguard who had died too soon. When all who wished to share memories had done so, the bagpiper played "Amazing Grace".

The rescue-swim team received something... two somethings... and proceeded to the surfboat and launched it with difficulty into the high and heaving surf. One man did not make it into the boat. Perhaps he was not supposed to.  The oars were raised vertically in a formal salute, and then they rowed up into the roaring breakers, over the foaming tops, now hidden from the shore on the windward side, now thrashing up the rising face of a near Macker.

Past the surf line, past the impact zone, and into choppy but waveless water, the surf boat turned parallel to the shore and again raised their oars like a forest of masts in a vertical salute. Something bobbed and floated. After a while, they rowed parallel to the shore, then turned and came surfing in, riding the churning waves.

When the surf boat was beached and the crew had tumbled out and rejoined the funeral afterglow, one lone strong swimmer swam like a champion back out to sea, heading for whatever it was that was still floating. I watched him and worried. Was this supposed to happen?  With quiet competence, he retrieved a life-saver's float, and also a washed-ashore lost oar.

This interesting ceremony made me wonder, what might an alien funeral be like?  For inspiration, I googled "strange funerals" from different parts of our own world.

Some traditions are widely known. Anyone who has watched the James Bond movies has seen the Jazz funerals of New Orleans, and the Zoroastrian "tower of silence". The Neanderthal "flower funerals" might have inspired the burial of Rue under flowers in the first "Hunger Games" movie. Possibly the Arthurian myths of Merlin trapped in the bole of a tree by Morgan Le Fay might share something in common with a Manilan culture that buries its dead inside hollowed tree trunks. Not dissimilar is the culture that pulps the remains of the dead, and inters what is left inside totem poles.

Another woodland culture suspends the dead in containers from ancient trees. Yet another people hang occupied coffins from cliff sides so that the spirits may be conveniently close to the sky.

Other "sky" burials in arid or mountainous countries such as Tibet involve the willing participation of vultures. Allegedly, even recently, there are communities where the dead are a valued source of protein and there is a strict pecking order about which relative may consume specific body parts. (Apparently, a sister-in-law may enjoy a deceased female relation's buttocks.)

While some of us seafaring folk, or small islanders who cannot spare meager farming or rainwater catchment areas for cemetaries may cremate and scatter ashes at sea, and sailors on the high seas sink weighted bodies reverently into the depths of the ocean, other communities compress the dead into reef balls to enhance the reef habitat for fish.

Other cultures compress corpses of loved ones into colorful beads that can be kept as ornaments. Yet another business turns ashes into carbon, and then crushes the carbon to create diamonds so that loved ones can become precious rings for their survivors' fingers.

Banned now is the practice of female survivors being forced to hack off parts of their fingers whenever a close family member died. Apparently, the ancient Hindu requirement (suttee or Sati) that widows throw themselves (often not willingly) into their deceased spouse's pyre  may not have been quite extinguished. Many misogynistic customs that kill off widows have implausible rationales, but most boil down to the physical and financial security of the males.

Arguably more tender are the societies that mummify their dead, and treat them as if they are still alive. Most mummification requires the dearth of moisture and the absence of bugs.  The most remarkable process might be the 3,000 self-mummification exercise carried out by priests who would eat a 1,000-day fat-reducing diet of nuts and seeds, succeeded by another 1,000 days of eating bark and perhaps pine needles and poisonous tea to make their flesh unattractive to bugs.  This would also make the monk or priest violently ill, which would further dehydrate him. After that, he would be walled up with only an air tube and a small bell to ring once a day until he died of starvation. Finally, his air hole would be sealed and his remains would be left for another 1,000 for mummification to be completed. This process was recently described in DISCOVER magazine, and also in one of the online sources mentioned below.

Sources:
http://cloudmind.info/25-unusual-death-rituals-from-around-the-world/

And
http://mentalfloss.com/article/58362/12-strange-funerals-and-funeral-traditions

And
https://www.scoopwhoop.com/inothernews/strange-funeral-customs/#.c0c8u3n03

I've omitted mention of many practices, but, perhaps this inspires some ideas for alien romance fiction funerary customs.

All the best,
Rowena Cherry

Skeptical Thinking

Two articles in the March-April issue of SKEPTICAL INQUIRER deal with critical, scientific-oriented mental habits, which are usefully relevant to thoughtful world-building. I subscribe to this magazine, which tackles pseudoscientific beliefs and theories of all types, mainly because exploration of topics such as UFOs, Bigfoot, poltergeists, and many other subjects in the fields of the paranormal and cryptozoology can yield story ideas (and also keep fictional characters who encounter such phenomena from seeming too gullible, if they're aware of the major arguments against, say, telepathy or channeling spirits). Some articles do take a blatantly anti-religious stance, but not enough to put me off the magazine as a whole. "Skepticism" doesn't mean "cynicism" or stubbornly doubting everything. As used in this publication, it means keeping an open mind, asking questions, and being ready to change one's beliefs as evidence demands.

The parent organization that publishes SKEPTICAL INQUIRER is here:

Center for Inquiry

"Why We Believe—Long After We Shouldn't," by Carol Tarvis and Elliot Aronson, analyzes the well-known phenomenon of cognitive dissonance. Once we've made up our minds on a topic, further information that contradicts or invalidates our belief or position makes us uncomfortable. The idea that we've made a mistake in holding a certain belief threatens to undermine our self-concept as intelligent, informed, morally upright people. We tend to pay more attention to and give more credence to data that support our position (confirmation bias). Social media exacerbate this problem. As everyone knows, Facebook (for instance) makes it easy to control our feed so that we end up in a bubble where we encounter only information that agrees with the beliefs we already embrace. Confronting evidence that we made a mistake in choosing the last car we bought (one of the authors' examples) and consoling ourselves by seeking out facts that reinforce our original high opinion of the vehicle is one thing. Letting confirmation bias rule us in matters such as politics or religion is more serious. This article uses the metaphor of a pyramid to illustrate how confirmation bias can drive people on opposite sides of an issue further apart. Imagine two people starting near the top of the pyramid, pretty close together. Often, at this point, "we are faced not with a clear go-or-no-go decision, but instead with ambiguous choices whose consequences are unknown or unknowable." Forced to make a decision, often an "impulsive" one, "we justify it to reduce the ambiguity of that choice." The more actions we take to justify our commitment to that initial choice, the nearer to the bottom of the pyramid we move, so that the two people who started close together at the top end up getting further and further apart. The authors acknowledge that "it's good to hold an informed opinion and not change it" every time a possible objection comes along. At the same time, though, it's "essential to be able to let go of that opinion when the weight of the evidence dictates." I'm reminded of C. S. Lewis's discussion of faith, which, he explains, doesn't mean blindly believing apparently impossible things. It means that once we've reached a certain belief (in his example, in God) for what we consider good reasons, we should stick to that belief unless we encounter solid evidence to disprove it, not let every adverse life event or shift in our emotions override our rational commitment.

"The Virtuous Skeptic," by Massimo Pigliucci, outlines the ethical principles a person intelligently seeking truth should embrace. Humility—knowing one's limitations and recognizing what kinds of expertise are needed to produce an informed opinion on any particular question—heads the list. The author lays out a table of "epistemic virtues"—curiosity, honesty, objectivity, parsimony (Occam's Razor), etc.—and the opposite "epistemic vices"—closed-mindedness, dogmatism, gullibility, self-deception, etc. The article ends with a list of questions we should ask ourselves, which apply well to any argument, scientific or not (slightly paraphrased and shortened): Did I carefully consider my opponent's arguments instead of dismissing them? Did I interpret my opponent's statements in the most charitable way possible (very important in politics!)? Did I entertain the possibility that I could be wrong? Am I an expert in this area, and, if not, have I consulted experts? Did I check the reliability of sources? Finally, "do I actually know what I'm talking about, or am I simply repeating somebody else's opinion?"

Critical thinking is hard work!

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Depiction Part 24 - Depicting A Villain by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Depiction

Part 24

Depicting A Villain

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Here we come to the main question a writer must answer if weaving a conflict between Hero and Villain: Why Does The Villain Want To Rule Forever?

Here is the index to the previous parts in the Depiction Series:

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

By "depicting," I mean show don't tell -- create a visible consequence of what you want to say, instead of saying it.

Saying what you want to say is "telling" not "showing."  In screenwriting, that is called "on the nose" -- dialogue that is the author speaking to the viewer, not one character speaking to another.

Here is the index to Dialogue:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/10/dialogue-parts-1-4-listed.html

One reason we gravitate to Romance, go away and come back over and over, is that the two main characters are not "Hero" vs. "Villain."

The two main characters are both Hero Quality Material -- great novels start before the Hero Quality in either is fully in charge of their decision-making.

TV Fiction is gravitating toward the Ensemble Cast -- a rag-tag group of Hero and/or Apprentice Hero Characters striving to overcome impossible odds to achieve a worthwhile goal.

Star Trek: The Original Series (ST:ToS) did this using mostly the Kirk-Spock-McCoy triad, which Roddenberry told us ( in the many interviews we did with him to excerpt for the Bantam Paperback STAR TREK LIVES! ) that Kirk, Spock, and McCoy were three parts of his own personality.  This is actually a well known secret of fiction-writing, dating probably way back before the Ancient Greek plays.

It is how you "tell the story" -- "tell" being the operative word. A writer "tells" a story.  That is what it feels like while writing words, one after another.  When you get stuck, you ask yourself, "What Will The Other Characters Do?" and you don the role of that Character.  As all good Character Actors will explain, to don a role you must reach inside yourself for that trait, pair away all the rest of the real you, and bring that single aspect up to the surface where the audience can see it and recognize it.

That is the secret to "targeting a readership," -- find a fragment of a real person and depict that single trait so that a lot of people can understand it and find within themselves the laudable or reprehensible trait which is dominating the Character's decision making.

Here is the Index Post to the series on Targeting a Readership"

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

Screenwriting manuals give a formula for creating Characters -- identify 3 Traits, specify them and then write that character ALWAYS showing one or two or all three of those traits.

When done mechanically, just following the formula, the procedure produces "cardboard  Characters" viewers do not believe.

This happens more in movies and TV Series than in novels -- which is why some people prefer reading novels to watching TV.

A good case in point is the TV Series, The Librarians,

which is a blatant copy of the TV Series Warehouse 13.

https://www.amazon.com/Warehouse-Pilot/dp/B002GJRP6A/

https://www.amazon.com/Librarians-Season-01-Matt-Frewer/dp/B01L00HWN6/

The Librarians is a TNT TV Series:
http://www.tntdrama.com/shows/the-librarians.html?sr=the%20librarians

Returning to the universe of TNT's hit movie franchise, The Librarian, this new series centers on an ancient organization hidden beneath the Metropolitan Public Library dedicated to protecting an unknowing world from the secret, magical reality hidden all around. This group solves impossible mysteries, fights supernatural threats and MORE...

In Season 3 - Episode 1 - The Librarians And the Rise of Chaos -
http://www.tv.com/shows/the-librarians-2015/and-the-rise-of-chaos-3425989/
we get that wondrous line from the Villain -- " ... and rule forever."

This is delivered (rather well, considering how corny it is) as "on the nose dialogue."

This is what this Villain (adversary, opponent, nemesis ... ) aims to achieve.  It is the statement of the goal.  By that choice of goal, the viewer can instantly identify the Villain as a really Bad Guy (especially because he has enough magical power to make it happen!)

The Librarians is designed to be comedic -- like Warehouse 13, it is very broad comedy, somewhat akin to the TV Classic My Favorite Martian -- which was the only real science fiction on TV for years.

http://www.tv.com/shows/my-favorite-martian/

And from TV.Com --
CATEGORIES
Comedy, Fantasy, Science Fiction
THEMES
witty remarks, planetary explorers, secrets and lies, space travel, outrageous situations

My Favorite Martian is actually a SitCom with Science Fiction elements (but in those days it was considered Fantasy).

In both cases, we have the adversary of the week -- and the team (the Martian and his host human on Earth) unites to defend -- the Guest Martian or The Library.)

From TV.Com
My Favorite Martian first aired in September of 1963 on CBS and was probably one of the first sitcoms with a "bizarre" or fantasy premise to emerge in the early to mid 1960's. It joined the ranks with Mister Ed which began in 1961.

Star Trek: ToS began in 1966.

My Favorite Martian paved the way for Star Trek - and all the Science Fiction Romance that has come out of the fanfic.

The Librarians is ensemble cast, like Star Trek - but has a "story-arc" like Babylon 5.  Star Trek was an "anthology" show - designed to be viewed in any order, with the adversary of the week (usually not very villainous).

So My Favorite Martian and Star Trek were stories about "How To Make Friends With Adversaries - who are quite Alien."  They begin the continuum which has resulted in Science Fiction Romance about "How To Marry An Alien."

One of my all time favorite novel series about marrying an alien (even having the Alien's kids!) is Gini Koch's Alien Series.  The 2016 entry in that series is Alien Nation (yes, the author knows all about the TV Series by that name.)

Gini Koch depicts her Hero, Kitty Kat, a woman with fiery determination to make things right, as having a knack for converting enemies into friends or at least allies against the monsters trying to kill everyone.

In Alien Nation, Kitty manages to convert some of the most voracious monsters into friends.  It sounds ridiculous -- but Gini Koch makes you believe every word.  The secret is in how she depicts what is going on inside Kitty Kat's head -- this great Hero that everyone trusts to avert disaster has no idea what she's doing, and no plan that she knows of.  She has a few clues from a super-being (not a god, but a Being who understands the universe as the creation of God), but Kitty Kat has to figure things out and take chances on the fly.

When things work out well, you believe it could actually happen that way, and it is not just that Kitty is married to an Alien and has acquired "powers" while having his children.

Gini Koch's novel series is not comedy -- it reads more like a well played video-game, with comedic moments, absurdities turned to opportunities, and drama writ large.  The target audience is familiar with Star Trek -- maybe not with My Favorite Martian -- and games.

In the 1960's, we were just beginning to launch orbital vehicles and dreaming of real space travel -- wondering if our ships would bring back Alien Diseases we could not contain.  We were focused on finding Alien Life Out There.

Hundreds if not thousands of novels and short stories had been published about First Contact. The film, The Day The Earth Stood Still, is classic because it addressed all those issues.

Here is the 1951 Classic:
https://www.amazon.com/Day-Earth-Stood-Still/dp/B000UL5YW8/

And here is the 2008 remake:
https://www.amazon.com/Day-Earth-Stood-Still/dp/B001THAS5K/

Again, the 1951 film focuses on how the fearsome, formidable, monstrous Alien is actually a nice guy having a hard day at work.

As with the 1984 classic film, Starman,
https://www.amazon.com/Starman-Karen-Allen/dp/B004ZCM2Q4/
we end up wanting to leave Earth with the Alien -- absolutely smitten with this valiant figure and torn up inside to lose him.

Much of the most famous science fiction of those decades depicts the Alien as a potential friend, lover, ally, advocate, even though the Alien may start out at odds with Earth, or perhaps Earth authorities order an all-out attack on the Alien.

The consensus seems to be that Aliens are not necessarily Villains.

Just like humans, Aliens have a variety of potentials within them.  Some are friends, some are stupid, some are silly, some are immature, some are powerful but inept, some are misinformed - the list goes on.

These very humanistic aliens were the most popular during those early decades.

Then came the pronouncement from unimpeachable experts that there just weren't going to be ANY planets around other stars "out there."  The solar system we are in is unique, and just is not going to have anything like a duplicate anywhere -- probabilities are absolutely against the idea of Alien Life Like Us.

The academic power behind this pronouncement, fraught with every mathematical proof you could name, believed and espoused by the Einsteins of the era, drained most of the funding from NASA, and nearly killed off the space program.

Along with it, went Star Trek and most of the Science Fiction Romance you might see made for large audiences (such as film, or TV).

Then funding was squeezed out for orbital telescopes, and other instrument packages to explore our solar system.  Meanwhile, physics and math marched on.  It takes a lot of very fancy math to slice and dice the information garnered by our orbital instruments, and even our mountain-top instruments.  It takes a lot of computing power to understand that data -- computing power we didn't have in the 1960's.

So recently, the unimpeachable experts are pointing at actual planets around stars so distant it makes no sense to quote distances in miles.

We have a whole new generation of unimpeachable experts publishing in peer reviewed journals, as prestigious as the ones that declared how improbable an Alien Civilization Out There was.  Now, the calculations are trending toward the inevitability of there having been Aliens somewhere.

Of course, we are looking at data that is millions of years old.  Light travels way too slowly for us to have any idea what is actually happening "now" (the very definition of "now" and "time" is changing as we figure out what gravity is.)

So, once again, films and TV depict interstellar civilizations -- but this time, the Aliens are not so friendly.  War is more fun, so we have Star Wars continuing.  And Star Trek has become more about War than Exploration of the Unknown.

But while Science Fiction's depiction of interstellar civilizations was relegated to the absurd, another branch of the Science Fiction genre called Adult Fantasy (Fantasy that is not morality plays for children) has formed and taken off.

Early among the Adult Fantasy entries was Katherine Kurtz's Deryni Series
https://www.amazon.com/Deryni-Rising-Chronicles-Katherine-Kurtz/dp/044101660X/

Reprinted many times over the decades, this series depicts an alternate universe -- set around our year 900 AD -- and involving Royalty.  Every book in this series is about "who shall be King" -- it is about who shall "rule."  One faction vying for rulership is purely human (with all the villainy that goes with human mindset), and the main opposing faction is Deryni, basically human but with "powers."

The worldbuilding behind the Deryni universe includes the existence of "gods" and "demons" and forces and powers both Dark and Light (as in Star Wars).  In the Deryni Universe, there is also competition between Deryni and humans for control of "The Church" -- which is pretty much depicted as if it is Christianity.

The humans are convinced Deryni and their "powers" (of telepathy, fireball throwing, teleportation, etc) are of the Devil.  Deryni understand their powers as being simply Power -- like any capability -- and the "Light" side of their force comes from the God worshiped by the humans in the Church.

So the whole "who shall be King" plot line is driven by the argument over the truth of Religion.

I do highly recommend this series -- it does have some hot Romance laced through it, but like any story of hereditary Aristocracy, pivots on arranged marriage.

This series was one of the earliest in the Adult Fantasy market and helped shape that market, define the sub-genre.

Later, whole series arose depicting Power without God, and God or gods without humans with Power.  For the most part, "The Church" as a governing body and institution commanding the culture was deleted from Adult Fantasy.  Aristocracy, Dukes, Kings and their necessary wars persisted, but the power of God was left out.

That deletion of God from fiction parallels the rise of the atheist movement in today's world.

People want fiction that seems realistic -- and the real world was systematically rejecting the concept of Religion (even though God persisted, the institutions designed to serve God's purposes became despised for hypocrisy and lack of tolerance and diversity).

Political Power became the sole bone of contention in the plots, even when magical power was "real" in the fictional world, and the special people who could wield magic were organized (Hedge Witches or as in Babylon 5, a Guild).

For a long time, ESP (telepathy, telekinesis) was accepted as a science fiction element while "magic" involving summoning demons or angels or praying for acts of God was relegated to Fantasy.

Most recently, though, the Fantasy Genre has emerged as the flip side of the Aliens of the 1950's and 1960's (The Day the Earth Stood Still, My Favorite Martian).  After a couple of decades of mixing and blending ESP and Magic, reinventing the premises behind why they work and who can work them, the Fantasy Genre has focused on angels, demons, djinn, sprites, brownies, fairies, vampires, were-creatures, shapeshifters, zombies, ghouls, all the mythical Supernatural creatures and peoples, to tell exactly the same stories we saw about Aliens From Outer Space.

In modern Fantasy, the Mythical Creatures perform the same role and function as the Aliens did in early Science Fiction -- friend or enemy, opposition, voracious attacker bent on stripping Earth of all its wealth, eating humans, or whatever their objective.

Some of these Mythical Creature adversaries want to "escape" from some other dimension, penetrate the barrier between dimensions, and "rule the earth."

Those are the Villain Aliens.

The friendly Aliens become allies using their power and knowledge to help the human hero vanquish the Evil Supernaturals.

In the 1950's and 1960's, Aliens from Outer Space were either bent on "ruling" Earth or were potential friends.  Potential friends were the most popular.  Gradually, the assumption that anything Alien out there just had to be Bad Guys - so Potential Rulers became the most popular.

Today, some Mythical Supernatural People are potentially friendly, but the prevailing assumption seems to be that Supernatural Creatures are bent on ruling Earth, and therefore any Supernatural that intrudes must be destroyed before it can "take over."

Remember when the Vampire Romance shot to the best sellar lists in mass market paperback?  That sub-genre grabbed enough market share to get spine-labels and logos so you could find them on the bookstore shelves.  It took a while for writers to gear up to produce a lot of Vampire Romance -- and meanwhile, the readership lost its taste for "The Vampire As Good Guy" novel.

As manuscripts flooded into publishers, publishers reduced the number of slots for Vampire Romance.  As the e-book market began to form, many of those unsold manuscripts went to e-book, but the sub-genre disappeared from mass market shelves.

Hot-steamy Vampire Romance still thrives in e-book, with every type of Vampire being the  Hero, and writers inventing new types.

Blending the Supernatural with the Scientific Alien, I did a Vampire-Alien-From-Outer-Space Romance in my St. Martin's hardcover release, Those of My Blood, which has had many reprints.

https://www.amazon.com/Those-My-Blood-Tales-Luren-ebook/dp/B00A7WQUIW/

So, among Aliens From Outer Space, and among Supernatural Aliens From Another Dimension, we find those who want to "rule forever" and we label those with the ambition to Rule as villains.

The blackest of bad guys are always bent on "ruling."

Those with "Powers" want to "be King."  We always create genres around Villains, Bad Guys, Malevolent Forces, Evil Masterminds that want to RULE as the Supernatural creature in Season 3 - Episode 1 - The Librarians And the Rise of Chaos -
http://www.tv.com/shows/the-librarians-2015/and-the-rise-of-chaos-3425989/.

Those who are driven "to rule" are Evil.  That's how you identify Evil - it is determined to "take over" and to "rule."

Good stories are about opposing Evil and thwarting its Rule.

Why is that?  Why do we depict Villains as wanting to Rule?

Why do we know that the Character who wants to Rule Forever is the Villain, the Evil that must be stopped at all costs?

If the Villain does not tell us, "...and I will rule, forever!" how do we figure out that this Character is the Villain?

There are thousands of right answers to that question.  To do Fantasy worldbuilding, a writer has to pick an answer (or generate a brand new one) to why the need to Rule is villainous.  Depict that reason without the on-the-nose dialogue line, "...and I will rule, forever!"  If you can do that, you will show-don't-tell the Villain of your piece.

Creating and depicting good Villains (who are dead set on Ruling) may require a writer to learn more about the inner workings of their own minds than they want to know.

Sometimes, bringing that knowledge to the conscious level creates "writer's block."  And sometimes getting hold of that knowledge breaks "writer's block."  So experiment carefully.

Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Fair Use

Last week was Fair Use Week. Not a few people used the occasion to suggest their own, somewhat wishful, opinions of what Fair Use is (or ought to be).

Much as I enjoy very long and convoluted sentences containing parenthetical clauses, I enjoy ellipses even more. Here is a simplified version of the Fair Use law:

".... the fair use of a copyrighted work ....for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright."

"In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include--
1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial  nature or is for non-profit educational purposes;
2) the nature of the copyrighted work,
3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work."

The full wording can be found here:
https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107

Other links to Government information about Fair Use are here ....    and here ....

The excellent, copyright-friendly blog "Illusion Of More"  critiqued a Fair Use Week video that may have taken the notion of allowable parody (as Fair Use) beyond what ought to be allowable.

To be Fair Use, a parody must "comment" on the original work. Using video clips of a copyrighted movie song and simply changing the lyrics may not be Fair Use, especially if the replacement words have nothing to do with the spirit or meaning of the original work.

You may well wonder, as I did, what is the difference between the use of Disney's "Let It Go" (as discussed in the "Fair Use Isn't Dare Use" article) and Jib-Jab's use of the Woodie Guthrie lyrics of "The Land Is Your Land" as the sound track to a political cartoon.

A discussion of the latter is here:
http://whatisfairuse.blogspot.com/2008/03/more-on-that-jibjab-this-land-is-your.html

As the above-mentioned blog states, "The contents of this site are not intended and should not be taken for legal advice."

It's an E.F.F. blog, and the fine print explains that it is an EXPLORATION of issues RELATED to copyright and fair use "in our digital culture". (The emphasis is mine.)

Apparently, Jib-Jab was sued and counter-sued, and won. And they are still at it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwfutA3yxig

Illusion of More, in their article "Celebrate Fair Use Don't Misunderstand" makes what is IMHO the excellent point that "the narrative of the copyright 'debate' today is partly driven by predatory and wealthy tech enterprises, seeking to exploit every weakness in a legal framework that never anticipated the scale, volume, or diversity of infringement that would become possible in the digital market."

All the best,
Rowena Cherry

PS: Periodic reminder. This is a Blogspot blog run by on a Google Platform. Google puts cookies on your computer, whether you want it or not. By visiting this blog, you are construed to have consented to have a cookie or six. Clear your History, check your Preferences.

Evolution of Civilization

An interesting short article answering this question:

Why Haven't We Found Civilizations Older Than 7000-8000 Years?

The questioner wondered why, if our species evolved hundreds of thousands of years ago, it took so long for human cultures to make the transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a civilized one.

Here "civilization" means the standard definition of settled city life with classes of people who specialize in various occupations. Several conditions are required for civilization to develop:

Most importantly, agriculture is necessary to produce enough of a food surplus to free some subsets of the population to specialize in other skills and be supported (through trade, patronage, etc.) by the farming class. Agriculture needs at least two preconditions, as outlined in the article—favorable climate and a critical mass of population (for agriculture to have a significant advantage over hunting and gathering; if a society is small enough that it can feed itself by hunting and gathering, there is no incentive to switch to the harder work of farming). Both of those conditions were fulfilled after the last Ice Age gave way to the present "interglacial" period we're living in.

"Civilization" in this sense is probably a prerequisite for advanced technology. To produce the kind of high-tech society we now have, you need people free to work full time in highly specialized fields of research, engineering, and manufacturing. Therefore, an SF author creating a space-faring alien culture has to give the aliens a home world and an evolutionary history that allow for agriculture, settled living, and vocational specialization (even if that worldbuilding never explicitly gets into the story). If the aliens come from a radically different kind of background, how they developed the capacity for space travel probably needs to be explained.

That article links to a Quora page exploring another intriguing question: Why haven't other animals evolved intelligence equal to ours?

Why Didn't Other Animals Develop Intellect Like Apes?

What are the minimum prerequisites for developing intelligence (once you get past the hurdle of defining "intelligence," of course)? As far as we can tell from observing ourselves and other animals with an intellectual edge over their closely related evolutionary counterparts, some of the factors seem to be belonging to a social species, having manipulative organs to interact with the environment, having access to abundant nourishment to support a big brain, and possibly being omnivorous (because having to search for food and determine what's good to eat encourages problem-solving). When constructing a sapient alien species, it's desirable to consider how they evolved to become intelligent, keeping these factors in mind.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World Part 24 - Writing About The Future And For The Future by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World

Part 24

Writing About The Future And For The Future

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

The Index to previous posts in this series can be found at

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/05/index-to-marketing-fiction-in-changing.html

Recently, I was told by a contact on Facebook who was systematically reading through my Star Trek fanfic series, Kraith
http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/
that Star Trek should have picked up my vision of Vulcan Culture when they came to "reveal" the world where Spock grew up.  I've been told that before, but this was a new reader currently living in the modern context.

Meanwhile, I followed the political developments as the Republicans won and the Democrats lost, not just the Presidency but in States and local contests up and down the ticket.

Officially, publicly, the professional politicians are telling their bewildered constituents how shocking, unfair, wrong, unprecedented, and just plain unacceptable these losses were. 

I was not shocked, bewildered, or even mildly surprised.  But I ranged far and wide among news sources (even abroad) and from long experience, interpreted the news media "story" or "narrative" in terms of what I knew about the players and the Constitution.

I understand (as few do) both Journalism and the Electoral College -- artifacts of my odd upbringing.

So I saw the "game" Trump played was for the Electoral Votes and never mind anything else -- it took him a while to get a grip on that process, but he swept up advisers who know what I know, and he believed them and altered course to scarf up all the Electoral Votes that were "low hanging fruit."  And he ignored the rest.

Meanwhile, any sensible person could see that Hillary won the popular vote -- and with good reason.  She ran a well funded campaign.  I have noted over decades that all you have to do to predict the winner of a Presidential Contest is to find out which candidate has raised the most money.  Then you can ignore all the noise that money makes with advertising. 

This works well on local contests, too.  The State and County nominees with the most money win.  That's it.  Follow The Money.  Nothing else matters.

At least it has been that way until 2016.  In many contests it did go that way.  But it is no longer a certainty.

If you, as a futuristic Romance writer, intend to write novels that can be read (as Kraith is being read) decades hence and still captivate and stimulate readers to their own creativity, then you should think long and hard about how the 2016 Presidency went.

Trump ran almost no TV advertising -- got almost no newspaper endorsements -- and spent money mostly on his airplane, very tiny staff, and huge venues for his overflow crowds.

Frankly, it beats me why anyone would go to such a "rally" -- to hear him say in person exactly what you've heard him say on TV.  After a while, he honed his pitch down to a boringly repetitive set of points woven around his random, stream of consciousness commentary. 

Now think about this thing he did with the hats.  Tiny slogan fits on front of the hat - his first appearance was with a white hat and that slogan.  He threw the hat, just like they do at the Stock Exchange when the Dow hits a milestone, like 20,000.

Remember all the posts you've read here on SYMBOLISM. 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/01/theme-symbolism-integration-part-5-how.html  -- has links to previous parts.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/09/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-16.html

Trump built a fictional world right before your eyes. If you want to gain greater respect and prominence for Romance as a genre, but science fiction romance in particular, for the concept of the Happily Ever After, consider what you can learn from what Trump did.

Remember Trump is a marketing genius -- not-so-terrific-products (often failing, often bankrupt) hitting TOP TIER, or just below that and making enough profit to offset losses on other products. 

Court costs of one "settlement" are just added on to the sale price of some other product of the business.  Likewise with "taxes" -- it is a principle of bottom line truth -- corporations don't pay taxes; customers do.  Tax on corporate profits is just figured into the sale price so the corporation makes the same or better profit.  It takes years to level it out because there is resistance by customers to paying more, but with time the corporation prices their product up to cover the taxes they pay, and the customers scream at the government to make the government stop inflation because the price of what the customer buy has gone up.

It is a game governments play, flimflammery misdirecting public attention.

In fact, it is a precise mathematical formula called Public Relations.  Using Big Data, this crowd management methodology is now targeting audiences with pinpoint accuracy.

Trump saw an audience that was starved for a product, and created that product, then sold it to that audience. 

Which product and which audience is irrelevant to you as a writer of fiction. 

Understanding the process of finding an audience, understanding what that audience wants before that audience knows it wants it, crafting the product to captivate that audience, and informing the potential buyers of that product where to find it --- those things you must understand.

Marketing Fiction In a Changing World is about foreseeing where the audience will be decades hence, way before that audience exists, and writing for that non-existent audience.

However, at the same time, you must craft your fiction for the current, contemporary, modern audience.  It has to be readable, understandable and about the modern issues.

Where the future's issues (themes) and the current reader's issues (themes) overlap, and where they differ (or conflict) will provide you with the big canvas against which to throw your characters.

Trump's campaign connected the past with the present and with the future.

Instead of compartmentalizing issues as separate things to be solved any-which-way was politically expedient, he connected all the apparently different issues into a coherent picture.

And he made the issues coherent by speaking incoherently.

It's impossible to follow that man's speeches unless somebody writes them on his teleprompter.  But he still includes -- makes up on the fly -- "applause lines."

Fiction writers who want to spin the most impossible (paranormal) tales and get readers to believe them should study speech writing - especially famous political speeches.

Trump captured the images, the symbols, churning through his audience's mind, and projected those images with conviction and power.

Hillary did the same for her audience, but with less power when speaking in person to audiences.  Why did she come across with less power?  Because the speeches were not in her own words.  She was smooth, polished, incredibly presidential, projecting a vision of how we all want our world to be.  She nailed the results we expect from a President.  And most of the time she was letter perfect - very studied, very focused on her audience.

So why didn't she win?  Her speech writers were even better at symbolism than Trump's stream of consciousness.

What really happened in this election - and how can you understand the Event and use it to write about the future in a way that will not seem "dated" to those who live in that decades-hence future?

Here's the thing.

They both won!

It was the Battle of the Titans - a classic Armageddon - and they both won.

Hillary won the popular vote and Donald won the power-vote.

Everybody loved Hillary, but everybody else trusted Donald to beat up their opponents.

This is shown clearly in the astrology of their Natal Charts.  Most astrologers missed it because it didn't seem important by most systems astrologers use.  But Hillary reached a lifetime peak of popularity on Election Day, and Trump reached a peak of unpredictable use of power, of explosive growth of power which will come into even higher focus on Inauguration Day. 

America elected a Champion, a Superhero. 

Note that Trump had started to run for President several times, flirted with the media over the notion, and backed off.  This time he drew out the flirting and stretched and stretched, then made a production number (very SYMBOLIC) of declaring candidacy coming down the Trump Tower elevator (down, not up).  He could have held the news conference UPSTAIRS and been seen going UP in that golden elevator.  He chose DOWN. 

The hats, the slogan, the direction - all symbolic.

The slogan is a succinct (have you ever heard him be succinct?) declaration of the theme of the novel he is writing before your eyes.

He could have done this years ago, but chose 2015 -- why?  Because he found his audience -- not through his TV Show (APPRENTICE) -- but through those who don't watch the commercials.

Note how the amount of money spent on political campaigns has escalated in recent decades.  The advertising, robocalls, actual person calls, signs, billboards, TV commercials, online commercials, emails, -- all is done by hiring and paying people to do these things.  The best, most expensive, advertising experts who have sold terrible products at vast profits for failing companies, are hired for Big Bucks to hammer the public with the candidate's "message."

In the post-mortem of the election, the Democratic Party is dissecting their "message" to see why it did not produce the predicted votes in the correct places.

Hillary Clinton should have won -- and she did win by millions of votes -- but her message did not draw her voters to the polls in the exact spots necessary to win the Electoral College.  So the Democratic Party is considering how to change their message -- not their behavior or the hearts of their people, but just their words -- to make people vote for them.

Just like the Republican Party (remember how emphatically the Party rejected Trump? He ran against the Republican Party - with a plethora of traditionally Democratic "messages." ) had used the same Public Relations "tricks" to make people vote for their candidates, the Democrats blame how they phrase their "message" not what they do when in office.

Fiction structure works the opposite way -- what the characters do is weighted more than what they say.  Readers decode Character by Behavior - not words. 

Readers - in the past, in the present and probably in the future - are intrigued by a disparity between what a Character does and what that Character says.

Compare that Reader preference to the 2016 political campaign.  The term "Liar" was thrown back and forth (facts were distorted no more than usual, but exposure was much more frequent.) 

Each of the Candidates was vetted by the media, comparing what they had done in the past with what they said in the present.

The Candidate who had done what she was saying she would do in the future as President garnered more votes.  The Candidate who had done things in the past that were starkly at odds with what he said he would do in the future, won a strategic victory.

Look at Trump vs Clinton as the "conflict" line of a novel - the typical love/hate novel.  You know that Clinton attended one of Trump's weddings - and other High Society Events hosted by Trump.  They "move in the same circles."

Study the history of that and you will find a Regency Romance in there.  You could write the same story set in the Roman Empire. 

Why did Trump focus all his energy on rallies, not TV ads?  But more importantly, why did that stupid strategy work?

Was it Trump's message, or his target audience?  Was it his war-gaming the Electoral College?  The Democrats have always been great at war-gaming the Electoral College - they carried California, a whopping prize.  Why did they lose Pennsylvania? 

Figure out a theory of why the election went to Trump and turn that theory into a theme, project that thematic truth into the far future, and write a novel for today's contemporary audience -- and you will have created a "Classic" that will be appreciated in the far future.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/10/how-do-you-know-if-youve-written.html

Think historically - from way back in Roman Empire times to now, and into the far future.

Have "messages" changed?  Or have audiences?

The reason ancient Greek and Roman plays are still performed and studied is that the messages, the politics, and the romances have not changed.  The reason those plays pull small audiences is that audiences have changed.

To write a classic, figure out what the audience of the future will be.

To understand audience change, consider the evolution of the media -- the medium through which a message must travel to reach a given person who wants that message.

That is what Trump did -- he understood that audiences have changed, are changing, and continuing to change.  I'm sure he saw and understood the advertising numbers from The Apprentice garnered between 2004 and 2015.  He knew that TV Advertising effectiveness was on the wane, and other political contest results (votes gained per dollar spent) bore out what he was seeing.

TV Cord Cutters are on the rise - college age people generally just don't subscribe to Cable, and won't waste time trying to find an over-the-air signal.  They access news and entertainment streaming.

The younger people seem to still prefer printed paper books, but watch TV on phone, tablet or sometimes a TV screen attached to a little Roku or Apple box (maybe game boxes are more common).

Tivo lets you click to skip a whole run of commercials. Nobody watches commercials - even if they play, everyone talks or leaves the room.  TV commercials don't deliver.

But there's a bigger trend behind that than cord cutters or inattentiveness. 

The real reason broadcast or cable TV commercials don't deliver value any more is very simple -- the audiences for each show is shrinking.

Here's the century long trend.

At the turn of the 20th Century, Radio was being deployed widely, radio sets came down in cost, and slowly 3 Radio Networks knitted the country together, CBS, NBC, ABC.

At any given evening hour there might be as many as a bewildering 3 choices of what to listen to.  The shows had sponsors -- usually one product or company would sponsor an entire half hour show - (fiction, news, music, standup comedy, variety). 

Eventually, there were some local stations that weren't part of the nationwide networks, and some shows on network affiliates were not broadcast nationwide. 

TV per-empted the explosive growth of Radio, but the same Big Three networks prevailed.  In the 1950's there were many hours during the day, late at night, even during Prime Time that there was only one show on TV.  Gradually, that exploded as TV Sets came down in price and were deployed into every living room (yes, max one per household!). 

So at any given time during the 1950's and even well into the 1960's, people talked at work, over the back yard fence while hanging out laundry, in grocery store lines, everywhere about whatever show was on last night.

About a third of the country would have seen the same show.  There was no way to record a TV show, so if you didn't see it, you never would, and would be out of the conversation.  Radio kept going strong through the deployment of TV (just as it is strong today via Web Radio and Podcasts), and not everyone watched TV. 

Companies that sponsored TV and Radio sold products so well, the market - the audience - for that product basically created the Supermarket (a store that carried a wide variety of products). 

In other words, the Mass Market was born of Radio audiences - huge percentages of the total number of people in the country.

Old World War II movies will show you how Baseball (broadcast on Radio, then TV) was used to source passwords and identify "real" Americans.

All Americans had certain things in common with each other that were not in common with those living in other countries.

America was unified by Radio - then TV.  Mass audiences became targets of Mass Marketing.  Concurrently - right before, during and after, the turn into the 20th Century - fueling the perfection of PR, Public Relations.

We've discussed PR and its effect on our fiction marketing efforts previously:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/02/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_25.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/02/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_18.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/02/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/01/theme-plot-integration-part-4-fallacies.html (with links to previous parts in that series).

So media (from the first "broadside" published in the 1700's all the way through Newspapers and magazines to the Internet) has knitted a whole country into one market, unified our thinking, given us all something in common with each other that prevails over our differences.

And with that united Market, that Audience, to study, mathematics and psychology unite with statistics to produce Public Relations, the art and science of hammering individuals into identical consumers of identical products (because mass production is cheaper so everyone can have what only aristocrats could afford a few centuries ago.)

Then, the very success of Television and "networking" local stations into national syndication, took that unified audience and fragmented it.

We are in a massive fragmentation trend right now.

With distribution via DVD turning into Amazon Prime Streaming, Netflix Streaming, Hulu, various cable systems offering "On Demand" -- and other methods of getting entertainment without commercials had become commonplace rather than a yearned-for goal.

In the 1960's, people used to videotape (VCR) record TV shows they loved, with a finger on the PAUSE button, to stop the recording during commercials, thus producing a commercial-free copy they could watch or share with friends.  Copying VCR recordings was deliberately (by VC R manufacturers under laws created under the hammer of lobbyists) prevented from making good copies of copies.  Each iteration degraded until you got mostly snow.

There is a market for fiction that does not come interrupted by commercials.

People, having gotten Netflix and a taste of commercial free TV, now take it for granted.

Theaters run commercials but not DURING movies. 

As a result of commercial-avoidance and the advent of vast diversity of entertainment sources (Game Machines, DVR, DVD, Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Video, Tivo, or just hooking your laptop to your TV), and a proliferation content providers (Indie Movies, Foreign Movies and TV with sub-titles, all the networks, and now Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix Originals (and many more launching Originals) -- there is no appreciable percentage of the 330 million Americans that watch any given Show or Movie.

In 1964 there were fewer than 200 million people in the USA.  The TV show The Fugitive pulled 78 million viewers.  Typical audience size for a TV show that was wildly successful was about 60 million.  In 2010, when the population had increased 30% or so, it was 42 million.

The Presidential Debates of 2016 pulled around 84 million, considered record viewership, but percentage wise of total US, not so impressive.

126 million, maybe a bit more, voted. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_watched_television_broadcasts#Most_watched_series_episode_of_the_decade

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/11/politics/popular-vote-turnout-2016/

So while our total population has been growing, viewership of any particular item has been shrinking percentage wise. 

Audiences have been fragmenting, and skipping or avoiding commercials.

The Democratic Party did not take that into account in 2016.  They did better at it in 2008 when they exploited online advertising -- but Trump used very little online advertising (if you don't count Twitter).  He posted YouTube videos on his campaign website, and some went viral.  Mostly his Tweets made TV News.

And there's the crux of the difference.  Commentators have repeatedly analyzed Trump's style as "dominating the news cycle" -- dominating being the operative word.

Remember I said above that he was in an astrological transit situation of massive POWER and unexpected growth.  He won by DOMINATING -- and what he dominated was the part of the world he understands best - the media, and branding.

Branding is a sub-set of advertising.  Trump branded each of his opponents in turn with a sobriquet -- and because the one or two word label accurately described the person, his sobriquet stuck. 

With ever more outrageous and unpredictable Twitter-storms and offhand remarks at rallies, Trump had the media focused on his every minute because (in competition with the other outlets) they had to have a camera trained on him every second in case he "said something." 

Unpredictable and Dominant -- all in the Natal Chart and Transits in effect during this time.  His disastrous mistakes were also highlighted in the astrology. 

Hillary Clinton could not match him for outrageous -- even her biggest controversies did not dominate the news cycle as much as Trump's commentary on her controversies did.

Why did Trump do that?  Because he saw his audience, and showed that audience a potential future (just as any Romance writer shows readers the potential Happily Ever After, leaving out the sleepless nights and smelly diaper changes.)

The 2016 Election has become notorious for being a low-turnout election, just over 50% of the voting age population voted, and made the decision for all the rest.

Again, though there are a third more people than in the 1960's in the USA, the number of people who know any one, given, thing about current events is smaller.

We are a fragmented society. 

Hillary Clinton tried to Unite this society using expensive mass marketing techniques  -- Donald Trump assessed the fragmentation and used it to his advantage using targeted marketing techniques (techniques that are still being invented and perfected.)

In other words, Trump played to his future audience as well as the present one.  He created a "classic" with his Election Campaign, a unique work of art that probably will never be copied.

So, what you as a fiction writer can learn from studying Donald Trump, is pragmatic marketing.

It wasn't Hillary Clinton's messaging that failed, but her assumption about the uniformity of America.  Trump and Clinton are of the same generation - he saw the change, she didn't.  We are a fragmented culture and each fragment has its unique taste.  No single medium reaches all the fragments.  As we have splintered over a century of technological change, so also will we unite over the next century.  Write for the audience of 2100, a united audience, but take into account that your current audience is an isolated fragment. 

Will one of the current fragments obliterate all the others, leaving only one fragment to dominate?  Or will all the fragments drop their unique signature brands, and unite via what they all have in common? 

Study how the 1800's and the Dime Novel turned into the 1900's and 300 Cable Channels, all with 24 hour programming.  Reverse that trend using the futurology we've been studying.


Take an Ideal Future -- such as Happily Ever After or Love Conquers All, the core themes of Romance Genre -- and sell it to the fragment of the current market that is hungry for it.

 So Kraith was written in a time when the TV audience was more unified, and still hits today's audience that is almost as fragmented as the world was before the Printing Press -- only today we have instant world wide communications (with Google Translate and subtitles!).  Nobody was predicting this social shift.  Will you predict the next swing of the pendulum?

If you guess correctly, work with a specific fragment of your audience, and that specific fragment's Brand becomes the Uniting Element among all our fragments -- then your fiction will be read a hundred years from now, and people will wonder how come it wasn't more popular back when.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Librarians Getting Cosy..., Copyright in 2017, More!

My subject line riffs off Jacqueline's title for her series, but my definition for the purposes of this copyright-related blog is the 1.3 version from the OED  "derogatory, informal (of a transaction or arrangement) beneficial to all those involved and possibly somewhat corrupt".

Librarians seem to be getting cosy with Silicon Valley behemoths.

The Trichordist makes an exquisitely strongly-worded case that the American Library Association and other library policy organizations have filed at least a dozen amicus briefs against the interests of authors and other artists, and on behalf of those who violate copyrights.

https://thetrichordist.com/2017/02/17/library-policy-hacks-continue-to-alienate-author-allies-while-sucking-up-to-silicon-valley/

Well, maybe the f-bomb isn't exactly "exquisite"...

There seem to be a lot of exciting old stories that might or might not be heard by The Supremes (SCOTUS) this year. Fenwick & West LLP provide a round up of the top four.

http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=ac59c728-1b64-4cba-875d-cf8d12a2b8c6&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+General+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2017-02-13&utm_term=

Two involve music and video, two involve fair use, one pertains to fashion. I can count. "Fair Use" is a much-twisted fig leaf  for permissionless innovators, and a defense of last resort.

Not of exclusive or even particular interest to writers is the latest from the TCPA. Apparently there are class action lawsuits against those annoying telemarketers who send unwanted text messages to cellphones.

http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=b190ede8-d150-49fe-a591-53241ea0bc11&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+General+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2017-02-16&utm_term=

McCarter & English LLP explain the situation to would-be telemarketers who might fondly imagine that if a reluctant recipient of their texts asks them to "please desist" and their bots are set up to only desist if the recipient texts "STOP", they are in the clear to merrily continue sending text adverts.

Mayer Brown LLP has a fascinating analysis of the copyrightability of recipes. Many writers include recipes in their novels. I have, myself, but I use my own unique ingredients and even more idiosyncratic terminology for measuring and manipulating them.

http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=bcf1b075-c275-4461-abcd-877819c64238&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+General+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2017-02-17&utm_term=

Finally, for today, the Law Office of Joy R Butler gives advice to small and large business owners on whether to stream or not to stream streaming service music in public places.

http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0f762583-d890-42e8-929b-d25d14f00edb&utm_source=lexology+daily+newsfeed&utm_medium=html+email+-+body+-+general+section&utm_campaign=lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=lexology+daily+newsfeed+2017-02-17&utm_term=

The bottom line is important. If you are a copyright owner who protects your own copyrights, respect the copyrights of other artists, musicians and songwriters.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

Living a Fuller Life in "Second Life"

Tom Boellstorff, an anthropology professor at the University of California at Irvine (one of my graduate schools), has written a book, COMING OF AGE IN SECOND LIFE, about his experiences doing fieldwork in the virtual world of Second Life. Here's a summary on Goodreads:

Goodreads

He has discovered that people with disabilities such as Parkinson's disease can enjoy full mobility in Second Life and do things impossible for them in their physical bodies:

Parkinson's in Virtual Reality

He resists the conventional assumption that what happens in a VR environment isn't "real." In an article in the UCI alumni magazine, he's quoted as saying, "Even in our physical world, not everything we do is real. And not everything we do online is unreal." For instance, we can lose, gain, or spend real money online. If we learn a language online, we're still learning. Emotions aroused by virtual experiences are genuine emotions. In the NEUROSCIENCE NEWS article linked above, Boellstorff says, "Virtual worlds are online places of culture that impact life in the physical world."

In Second Life, an architect and clothing designer who can no longer create their arts in the material world can do so virtually. Fran, an 88-year-old woman with Parkinson's, dances and practices tai chi online. She maintains that her "friends in Second Life are just as real as friends in real life." Amazingly, she found that her physical strength actually improved as a result of her activities in Second Life. Some scientists credit this phenomenon to mirror neurons, while others are dubious of this explanation, but Fran does seem to have derived concrete benefits from immersing herself in her avatar's experiences. Jadyn, who loved hiking but can't do it in the physical world anymore, created a virtual equivalent of Yosemite in Second Life. Boellstorff designed an island called Ethnographia, where visitors "use art and building tools to work through their difficulties." As he explains it, "Instead of writing about your experience, you can build your own experience."

As far as visual realism is concerned, avatars still fall into the Uncanny Valley, however. They look like dolls or, at best, obvious CGI characters, rather than live people. You can view a sample by Googling "Second Life avatar images." But no doubt this limitation will be overcome in time.

Living inside a virtual world is a frequent motif in science fiction. I can imagine a future in which severely disabled people might choose to spend most of their time in Second Life or a next-generation equivalent. If the technology improves enough, some people might even "move into" the virtual world permanently (with the care and upkeep of their bodies provided for, of course).

The current plot thread on the TV series MARVEL'S AGENTS OF SHIELD features a similar virtual environment built by the antagonist, called the Framework, so advanced that it feels in every way like the real world. The antagonist has captured a SHIELD member, placed her in a permanent coma, and imprisoned her mind in the Framework, where (according to him) she's perfectly happy. He has also lured one of SHIELD's potential allies to his side by promising her a life within the virtual world as an alternative to her terminal illness. The SHIELD genius who created the prototype of the Framework as a safe combat training environment agonizes over his unintended role in the villain's acts. Another character agrees with him, declaring, "The line between scientist and mad scientist is paper thin." While that statement runs counter to the optimistic, science-positive worldview of classic SF, the importance of anticipating consequences remains valid, and every new technology has both good and bad uses. Second Life may function as an "escape from reality" for some people but a portal to a more fulfilling life for others.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt