Index to Verisimilitude vs Reality

Index

to 

Verisimilitude vs Reality

Here are blog posts about how to create fiction based on Reality using a similarity to reality, verisimilitude.

Verisimilitude --- from Wikipedia

Verisimilitude is the philosophical notion that some propositions are more true or less true than other propositions. The problem of verisimilitude is the problem of articulating what it takes for one false theory to be closer to the truth than another false theory. Wikipedia

What is "fiction" if not a "false theory" that is closer to Truth than another false theory?

Reality is True. Fiction is True. Neither is Truth without the other.


Part 1
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/verisimilitude-vs-reality.html

Part 2 Master Theme Structure, The Camera, Nesting Plots and Stories
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-2-master.html

Part 3 - The Game, The Stakes, The Template
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-3-game.html

Part 4 - Story Arcs and the Fiction Delivery System
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-4-story.html

Part 5 - So What Exactly is Happiness?
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-5-so.html

Part 6 - Show Don't Tell Theme
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/10/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-6-show.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

What's In A Name?

Some words are widely misunderstood, others have changed their meaning over time, and some have been deemed too archaic to be worth recording.

When Juliet  Capulet said, "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" She did not mean, "Where art thou, Romeo?"  She meant, "Why, Romeo, did you have to be born the son of Lord and Lady Montague?"

Maybe the rot set in the 60's with a song, "Don't sleep in the subway, darling" when the lyrics included a reference to "Whys and Wherefores" as if the two words were not synonyms.

One cannot trust online dictionaries for guidance, it seems... although, I can still find "absquatulate" (to decamp) and both meanings of "momentarily" are available (in a moment or for a moment).  However, on Wednesday Oct 14th, unilaterally, one dictionary changed the definition of "sexual preference" in hours.  Normally, Dictionaries announce new inclusions and deletions once a year.
https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/merriam-websters-dictionary-changes-meaning-of-preference-following-scotus-hearing/

Some articles on the topic show images of George Orwell (aka Eric Arthur Blair), to suggest that this is a frightening, "Orwellian" move by an internet influencer to change language to support a political narrative. But, that is all by the by. Or by the byway!

Nouns are important, as are all words. Without words, we cannot reason. When the meaning of a noun or verb changes suddenly, myriad written works become --perhaps-- obsolete or offensive, or inaccurately convey the writers' intended meaning at the time of writing.

Legal bloggers   Adrienne S. Ehrhardt, Rebecca L. Gerard, Elizabeth A. Rogers, Guy B. Sereff , and Ryan T. Sulkin for Michael Best and Friedrich LLP  have generated a very useful compendium of Cyber Security vocabulary terms

https://www.michaelbest.com/Newsroom/248106/Cybersecurity-Terms-from-A-to-Z

or
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=1b6cbaab-58e2-4003-a53e-5b9d70eacf7f


On a completely different level, the copyright office is extending copyright protection to blogs.  It appears that a blog like this one would have to file jointly (because there are 3 of us), every quarter, for copyright protection of up to 50 individual posts.

Legal blogger  Brandon W. Clark   for McKee Voorheis and Sease PLC explains.  

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=110bb3eb-2008-4497-ae02-4a13b66494d8

or 
https://www.filewrapper.com/obtaining-copyright-registrations-for-blogs-and-social-media-posts-just-got-easier/

For blogs where authors serialize a novel, Dickens style, this would be very useful indeed.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

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

Living in the Moment

Kameron Hurley's newest LOCUS column further discusses the quandary of living in these fraught times.

Measuring Life in Keurig Cups

She describes the joy of creative projects other than writing, endeavors that engage the body and senses such as the backyard pond she and her spouse constructed. She reminds herself and us that we can choose to brood over what's happening in the country and the world outside of our control or focus on what we can control, how we spend our own time.

I especially like her quote from Paul Harvey: “During times like these, it helps to remember that there have always been times like these.” Hurley brings up the example of Monet painting within earshot of bombardment during World War I. I often remind myself that the country and the world have survived much worse and returned to whatever "normal" may have been at the time. Consider the plague-devastated village at the end of Connie Willis's DOOMSDAY BOOK or London during the blitz in her BLACKOUT and ALL CLEAR. And yet here we are.

A message in Hurley's essay that particularly resonates with me is the theme of living in the moment. She puts it, “Am I physically all right, in this moment? Is everything okay here, in this moment?" This is a reminder I try to invoke for myself regularly, but I tend to think of it in negative terms: Is anything terrible or unbearable happening right now? The answer is usually "No." Of course, it may occasionally be "Yes," as with acute grief or terror or agonizing physical pain. More often than not, though, I suffer self-inflicted unhappiness by obsessing over bad things that may or may not happen in the future. Even impersonal forces such as political trends—sometimes I have to figuratively hit myself upside the head with the reminder that if the party I oppose wins the November election, the apocalypse won't descend upon us in the first week of November or even on Inauguration Day. To paraphrase a quote I came across somewhere recently, worrying doesn't make tomorrow any better; it makes today worse.

Since, unlike Hurley, I don't have a creative avocation other than writing, I make a conscious effort to take note of good things happening day by day—e.g., sunny weather, functioning cars, appliances, and utilities, reasonably okay health, Facebook videos of our youngest grandson (age two), the convenience of ordering books and other treats online, the restaurants that have reopened, etc. I've started posting some of these daily on Facebook under the label "Today's Good Things," most of which probably give the impression that my life is rather boring. That's okay; I prefer boring to chaotic. I also keep track of the daily word count on my current work in progress, which encourages me with the sense that I'm accomplishing something, however slowly.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Verisimilitude vs Reality Part 6 - Show Don't Tell Theme

Verisimilitude vs Reality

Part 6

Show Don't Tell Theme 

Previous parts in Verisimilitude vs Reality

Part 1
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/verisimilitude-vs-reality.html

Part 2 Master Theme Structure, The Camera, Nesting Plots and Stories
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-2-master.html

Part 3 - The Game, The Stakes, The Template
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-3-game.html

Part 4 - Story Arcs and the Fiction Delivery System
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-4-story.html

Part 5 - So What Exactly is Happiness?
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-5-so.html

Now in Part 6 we'll look at a TV Series - just one scene out of several seasons of the Netflix Original, MADAME SECRETARY.

I think the scene I'm going to analyze is from Season 2, Episode 5 or 6.

As you probably know, Madame Secretary is about a woman who comes from CIA roots, was a station chief in Europe, and with friends in high places ever rising, ends up working for the Secretary of State because a good friend becomes President and another good friend becomes Secretary of State.  Her kids have grown up associating with the President's son - Washington becomes a family business.  (Oh, and she's married to a former field operative now a Professor of Religious Philosophy and history buff.)

She uses her experience in the spy business to work out problems at the international level, and "wings-it" through complex situations, deeply disturbing career professionals in the State Department.  She becomes Secretary of State when her boss dies in a plane crash and she's next in line.

She discovers her boss, the former Secretary of State, was actually murdered, and there were unsavory money trails connected to that.

As she's investigating the murder of her boss, she solves more international problems. The whole plot-arc reminds me of SCARECROW AND MRS. KING, but instead of applying housekeeping skills to international affairs, she applies CIA spy craft skills.

The whole thing is a Mary Sue, wish-fulfillment-fantasy, superhero Mom TV Series - well produced and very entertaining.

It has a contemporary setting, and is very adroitly RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES.

Here are posts about ripping story material from the contemporary headlines:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/08/index-to-posts-about-using-real-world.html

Even if you're sick-sick-sick of the news and politics, this is a very diverting and interested show -- transparently Hillary or not, it works very well.

One reason it works is the depiction of the HEA life.

This show is about a couple years and years into the HEA life -- their oldest kid of three is in college.

The Secretary of State job is high-pressure, fast moving, an emotional jerk-around every day.

You'd think a professor's life would be placid - but unbeknownst to the Secretary, the CIA re-recruits her husband for a spy job.  He confesses the offer to her, and they make the decision together that he will take the job.

Eventually, by this point in Season 2, he has been promoted from field operative to "Handler."  His cover job is teaching international students the history of war.

The Secretary's brother is a doctor working in a hot-zone of the Middle East, lots of shooting, lots of wounded to care for.  He's in a position like Doctors Without Borders.

This episode opens with the doctor, scruffy beard and all, doing surgery on a critical patient when two tough guys, looking like Secret Service in battle gear, burst into the tent where he's improvising through a lack of supplies.

They are there to grab him and exfiltrate him back to the USA -- because there are death threats against his sister, the Secretary.

He goes, reluctantly but cooperatively - and he's steaming mad about it.

CUT

He's getting out of a car in front of her DC house as she's arriving and walking to the stairs.  He's still steaming mad and charging at her confrontationally -- all body language, not much dialogue.

Her Secret Service detail flattens him against a car's hood.

She notices, turns and flies to the rescue, "That's my brother!"

They let him up.

Her kid comes skipping down the stairs and wraps a hug.

Escorted inside, there's the big family scene, and how upset he is being dragged back to DC.

The explanation is that he could be kidnapped and used to blackmail her into whatever the terrorists want.

The THEMATIC MESSAGE is encoded in the camera work and dialogue, or lack thereof.

We have the Secretary of State under heavy Secret Service (more than usual) guard, being accosted by a scruffy dressed, bearded man (he's a big man, too).

The Secretary of State has to TELL her Detail it is her brother!

We have Secret Service body guards who don't do their homework to be able to recognize her family, and apparently haven't been looped on the memo about the Secret Service collecting and repatriating her brother a few hours ago?

Why do they wear those little earphone thingies if not to be informed of movements among their outfit? Why weren't they hearing a report as the brother's car stopped?

We have a clear "show don't tell" scene saying the Secret Service is incompetent.

This scene is more vivid because for all the previous episodes, the matter of her predecessor being murdered has been a Plot-Arc.  That murder was a failure of his Secret Service detail.

So on the plus side, the Secret Service flattened a potential attacker -- which is their job, and they did it well.

But find that scene and check out the camera work.

The Detail guys back off INTO THE SHADOWS, the camera slides away from them -- no emphasis on their chagrin, embarrassment -- no supervisor coming up behind them to give them what-for.

The Secretary does not upbraid them for failing to recognize her brother, does not yank out her phone and scorch the ear of the supervisor who didn't inform her detail that her brother was approaching.

Watch that scene carefully and really think about what's NOT there!

What theme do you think it illustrates symbolically.

The absences bespeak some of the themes of this show, the envelop theme about competence in Washington - at the helm of the most deadly government in the world.

Put this brother-arrives-steaming-mad scene in the context of the previous episode where Air Force One is "hacked" and the President, Vice President and Speaker of the House are not available to sit the Oval Office chair.  Madame Secretary gets sworn in as temporary President while they struggle to find out what happened to the President's plane.

Consider all the episodes where Madame Secretary pulls off strategic maneuvers and oddball decisions making everything come out fine when all the professional Washingtonians fail.

It's a Mary Sue.

She's the competent one - everyone else except her husband are fumbling idiots.  But because they are on the scene, the ship of state is on an even keel.

They have three pretty normal children (despite their oddball upbringing), and a very solid marriage.  They communicate.  They co-parent with grace and competence.

They both enjoyed being CIA field operatives, solving problems on the fly, going adventurous places, depending on knowledge and their backup teams working smoothly.

They bring matured skills to the jobs of Washington top-drawer decision makers.

They are in the Happily Ever After -- it is right there in front of the public's eye in one of Netflix's most popular dramas.

And her brother is steaming mad, despises her politics and career choices, and she uses information he provides while they are fishing to destroy a Terrorist (who also smuggles medicine).

Is your Happily Ever After being in a position where you are the most competent person around?  Most of the time, you can get powerful people to make reasonable decisions, but not always.

In a town where even the Secret Service bodyguard details are incompetent, how can anything get done right?

THEME: Incompetence can safely be ignored.

You don't think that's what the "That's my brother," scene says?

What isn't there speaks volumes.

How would you rewrite that episode's script if the theme was, "The USA Secret Service body guards are better than the reputation of Israel's Mossad."

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

No Old Chestnuts

 Titles matter. Originally, this short article was to be "Autumn Opportunities", then "Chestnuts" but "Chestnuts" or "Old Chestnuts" seemed uncivil. Hence the addition of "No..."

Starting on Tuesday, October 13th, the Authors Guild is running a series of conversations on Zoom, "From Manuscript to Marketplace."

This is the registration link.  It does not appear that participants have to be members. It ought to be particularly helpful for new writers who wish to learn more about the nuts and bolts of writing and publishing.

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN__opetkkzSAeLQK3uypENRA

There is an old chestnut of an entry theme mentioned in the "Don't Do" details about the Writers Weekly 24 Hour short story contest.  Only the first 500 entrants may compete for 85 prizes. Entry fee is $5 and the 24-hour contest begins on Saturday January 9th, 2021.

https://24hourshortstorycontest.com/

If writing a short story within 24 hours seems like an adrenalin rush, try a full length novel from start to finish in 30 days. That is National Novel Writing Month, every November.  Read all about it. Sign up. I don't believe that you have to donate to the charity.  Even if you don't participate, there are some excellent pep talks to inspire and motivate.

https://nanowrimo.org/about-nano

https://nanowrimo.org/pep-talks

There are many regional sub-chapters with events and support, so if you are a procrastinator, this might be the event that gets that first draft done.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry www.spacesnark.com

Stubborn Skepticism Versus Indiscriminate Gullibility

Working on a paranormal romance novella, I'm presently dealing with a recurrent problem in fiction of the fantastic: How long should a character keep rejecting the possibility of the supernatural before admitting it exists? How do you find a balance between jumping to the conclusion that every anomaly proves the existence of a vampire or ghost and clinging to adamant disbelief in the face of overwhelming evidence? Most people who discovered a century-old photograph that looked uncannily like a present-day acquaintance wouldn't think he must be a vampire, after all. They'd say, "Wow, what an amazing family resemblance." On the other hand, if they saw their friend turn into a bat or a cloud of mist, it would be only sensible to entertain the vampire hypothesis.

In DRACULA, Dr. Seward at first quite logically rejects Van Helsing's pronouncement that Lucy has risen from the dead as a vampire. After all, Seward is a man of science, running a "lunatic asylum" according to the most up-to-date precepts and practices. Of course he's aghast that his revered teacher, with advanced degrees in multiple fields, would embrace outmoded superstitions. Even when they find Lucy's coffin empty, Seward falls back on the obvious explanation of grave robbers. Only when he witnesses the undead Lucy walking in the cemetery does he open his mind to the horrible truth. After that, though, he drops his objections; he doesn't try to insist she's a hoax or hallucination.

Right now I'm reading THE HOLLOW PLACES, by T. Kingfisher, an outstanding horror novel featuring an alternate universe. It offers a skillful treatment of the characters' shift from skepticism to belief. When the narrator finds a hole in a wall of her eccentric uncle's combination home and novelty museum, she assumes a visitor must have damaged the drywall and left without mentioning the mishap. Upon starting work on a patch, she and her friend Simon discover a large open area behind the wall. Naturally, they first believe they've stumbled into extra space that was walled off for some reason. As they explore, they see that it's much larger than the dimensions of the building should allow. Even then, they don't think they've fallen through an interdimensional portal. They discuss ideas such as a tunnel constructed by illegal alcohol dealers during Prohibition and try to rationalize the fact that they don't seem to have gone up or down a level as they should have. When they open a door onto a fog-shrouded river dotted by numerous small islands, though, they realize they've entered an alternate world, an "anti-Narnia," as the narrator says. Despite Simon's joking remarks about being poisoned by black mold, they don't seriously waste time on the possibility that they're hallucinating.

My work in progress features a ghost child who performs poltergeist-like tricks. At first, the protagonist does her best to attribute the odd events in her house to the cat, her seven-year-old son, or even herself in absent-minded lapses. Further along, she contemplates whether she might be sleepwalking and moving things around or whether she dreamed the strange singing she thought she heard. The sight of the little girl vanishing before her eyes forces the heroine to accept the supernatural as real. I consider it plausible that an otherwise normal, stable person would believe in a ghost rather than assume she's suddenly gone crazy with no provocation. The latter happens in vintage horror movies, not ordinary life. For the same reason, her highly skeptical boyfriend converts to the ghost hypothesis when he, too, witnesses the child disappearing into thin air.

Where should the creation of a character in fantastic fiction draw the line between the extremes of hardheaded materialism and softheaded gullibility? The former can make a character very annoying, but the latter can lose the reader's sympathy, too. The main reason I never cared for the SCOOBY-DOO cartoon series when our kids used to watch it was that, no matter how many times the gang exposed a haunted house as a hoax, when they investigated the next "ghost" Shaggy always believed in it as uncritically as ever.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Soul Mates and the HEA, Real or Fantasy, Part 11 - Soulmates Explained

Soul Mates and the HEA, Real or Fantasy

Part 11

Soulmates Explained

Previous parts in this series are indexed at:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/05/index-to-soul-mates-and-hea-real-or.html

To convince a reader that, in your well-built world, Souls are real and it the components of reality necessary for two Souls to be "mates" are in existence, you have to take into account the target audience for your Romance novel.

This speaks to the topic of verisimilitude we keep returning to as a primary tool of the far-out science-fantasy writer.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-5-so.html

For many decades, Romance publishers and writers, and readers, didn't consider "Romance Genre" as a science fiction genre -- and if "Fantasy" it was somewhere beneath bad comedy in the prestige list even though Romance has always out-sold Science Fiction.

Now, Paranormal Romance and Science Fiction Romance are considered "mixed" or "cross" genre.

My contention is that there is no mixing involved. Romance has always been science-fantasy.

Romance is "science" because it investigates the formation of bonds, just like chemical bonds, that we don't fully understand but we know they "just work."

Romance is "fantasy" because the plots represent the highest aspirations of the readers looking for a life-turning-point.

Most fans of Romance either know from experience or believe from self-knowledge, that Soul Mates
are real.

We either know a couple that just clicks like that, or we have been part of such a couple.

Those who flatly disbelieve in the HEA, the Happily Ever After ending, still enjoy a good Romance novel simply assuming that the ending is an HFN and eventually something will happen to catapult the couple into renewed misery.

As a Science-Fantasy subgenre, Romance has the opportunity to convey to the skeptics a real-world theory of what, exactly, Soul Mates are according to supernatural scientific theory.

Many religions grope into the problem of conveying a model of reality that includes Souls, immortal and otherwise, always trying to make it simple for the average person to grasp.

And where there are Souls, there is the possibility of two of them belonging together, somehow.  Maybe it's unfinished karma from a previous life, or a Parent-Child relationship playing out, or some other theory.

Maybe, if you're doing Aliens on another planet, you'll need to invent one (probably more) religion that is substantially different from anything suited to humans. To do that in a way that human readers can grasp and learn from, you will need to know a lot about a lot of different religions and their take on Souls.

There are questions to ask.

1) How are Souls structured?

2) What kind of civilization would Aliens without Souls create?

3) What kind of civilization would Aliens with complete, whole, self-contained Souls create?

4) Can Soul Mates bond completely and still have one or  both lack Happiness?

You'll need a real-world theory of Soul Mates, and a set of questions that probe your Alien culture to reveal how and why the Aliens differ from humans. Then you need to design a human who can bond across that Soul-Gap, and a reason why that human would do that.

Google Soulmates Explained and pull up a wide perspective on Souls and Mates.  Keep the frame of reference we explored in "So What Exactly Is Happiness"
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-5-so.html

And keep asking yourself, as you read different philosophies, whether simply living with a Soul Mate, even bonding or marrying, produces Happiness.

Is meeting a Soul Mate a sufficient condition for the HEA?  Is it even a necessary condition of Happiness.

Then check out this 2-minute video explaining Soul Mates:

https://www.facebook.com/myJLI/videos/10159133735919411/

Notice the glancing reference to "life's purpose" or the purpose of life, and what that has to do with happiness.

To convince the skeptic that the HEA is real, in fact common, there is a lot of thinking to do about what Happiness actually is, if it even is a real thing.

Find out what your target audience thinks happiness is, find out why they think that, then challenge the roots of that belief. Disturb your readers and you will engrave your byline on their memories.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com