Research-Plot Integration in Historical Romance Part 2

Last week:
http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/01/research-plot-integration-in-historical.html
we looked at a trilogy of historical romance stories about Rashi's Daughters.

I'm discussing how Maggie Anton's trilogy of historical romance novels with paranormal, supernatural, and spiritual elements blended in, fails because of a failure of orchestration of advanced writing techniques, namely the technique of integrating techniques.

Anton's trilogy does not fail because of a failure of either research technique or plotting technique by itself, though her plotting technique is not one that I respond to or use.  But the two techniques applied separately produce an "oil and water" layered effect rather than an emulsion or a new chemical compound with unique properties (i.e. a Romance Novel).

I hope you have had time to consider these novels.  Here's a link to them on amazon:

Maggie Anton

I don't know Maggie Anton personally, and have no idea what went on with the writing of these novels other than what it says in the books.

Here is a reader response on Anton's first novel from Amazon to consider indicating that the author's imaginary Jewish Culture of the Middle Ages stood out from, made an oil slick on top of, and obliterated all the rest of the romance novel stories in the books:

---------QUOTE-----------
3.0 out of 5 stars Good in general but Jewish life lacks authenticity, May 10, 2009
By
D. L. Lederman "leahiniowa" (Iowa USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME) 
This review is from: Rashi's Daughters, Book 1: Joheved (Paperback)
I am an Orthodox Jew who happens to deeply enjoy history and well-written historic fiction. I have strongly mixed feelings about this book. I am deeply impressed with the research that went into this book as well as Anton's ability to compile an enjoyable story from her research.

Unfortunately, it is clear that Anton does not know enough about living the type of authentically observant life that Rashi and his family enjoyed to write about these people without over-laying them with a 21st century mentality.

Those of us who follow the traditions given down from parent to child over the generations know that Rashi's daughters did not wear tefillin and learn Talmud because they were rebels. On the contrary, they were very holy women who followed the law to the letter. Judaism is, at its authentic pure level, NOT a sexist religion.

Further, those of us who live the observant lifestyle are aware at a bone-deep level the benefits of abstaining from prohibited activities. E.g., the prohibition against mature, unmarried men and women touching at all (not to mention "making out" or "snogging" or what have you), along with the observance of the laws of married life, create an intense, passionate bond between husband and wife. No intelligent woman (or man) who has lived this lifestyle and learned significant amounts of Torah (the term Torah is often used to include the Talmud, Mishnah, Midrashim, etc. - basically all of the accumulated studies) would be foolish enough to put themselves in a position such as the female characters in this book found themselves with their "beaux."

To clarify what one of the other reviewers stated, yes, Jewish women at that time were mostly illiterate - especially as regards to Judaic studies. But so were most of the Jewish men. Only the special few - those with outstanding mental abilities or those with the finances to pay for an education - were able to learn enough to read and/or write Hebrew. And learning more than that was even harder to accomplish.

On the other hand, Anton's portrayal of Rashi's mother as an active, educated intelligent woman who ran her own business is strikingly accurate. Plus, I enjoyed learning about the lifestyle and history of Jews living during the time of Rashi.

I really would have preferred to give the book 3 1/2 stars or even 3.75 stars, because I do think it is very well-written and interesting. Unfortunately, books which do not portray Torah true Judaism accurately tend to do more harm than good. From the other reviews I have read, this already seems to be the case.

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

And here is a reader response posted on Amazon on one of my novels, House of Zeor, which indicates that applying the integration technique I'm discussing causes readers to be able to absorb the imaginary culture of imaginary characters even when it differs starkly from anything familiar:

------QUOTE------------
5.0 out of 5 stars Only the beginning . . . of a great series, November 4, 2011
By J. A. Davis "firedrake54" (Ontario, CA)
This review is from: House of Zeor (Sime~Gen, Book 1) (Kindle Edition)
I can't tell you when I first read "House of Zeor", but it was back when I was thin and my hair wasn't. I found it amazing, when, last month, after not reading it for perhaps 20 years, I picked it up and was immediately transported back into a fondly (and well) remembered world. This book is one of the most complex, painfully realistic and memorable psycho-sociological thrillers I've ever read, and the foundation for an entire universe of stories, the complexity and beauty of which would definitely win awards at Arentsi (and you'll have to read it to find out what that means).

Ms. Lichtenberg, her eventual co-author for later books, Jean Lorrah, and the entire community of Sime-Gen worldbuilders have imagined characters, societies and situations that embed themselves on your brain and don't let go. I suppose it's indicative of something that I remembered many of the terms used in House of Zeor for decades -- mostly Sime-specific curse words, I confess, but they're used in context so clearly you have no problem knowing exactly what they mean.

I've been reading science fiction for nearly 50 years (yes, really). I can count the number of authors and series that have stuck with me this well easily on two hands, and I've read a LOT of SF in those years. The Sime-Gen books make you want to KNOW these people, and make you CARE about what happens to them . . . and their society, which comes painfully to the brink of collapse and ultimate calamity.

I've heard them called "vampire-analog" stories, "chick books" and more, but at base, what they are is good stories, well told, about characters you can get into.

READ THEM!
-----------END QUOTE-------------



House of Zeor illustrates how readers respond to a "new chemical compound" and how that response differs from the response to "oil and water."

There are also comments on Anton's novels from non-Jews and from Jews who know less about Judaism than most readers of this blog know about Simes.

In the comments on Anton's novels, notice how the Medieval Jewish culture - the truly "alien" culture - of a small town in France leaps out and dominates the reader commentary.

Most of the reader comments on Sime~Gen focus on trying to explain the background to prospective readers because that background is the compelling force that shapes the characters.  Readers feel you won't understand why the characters do what they do without that background, but it's the characters and their effect on their civilization that the reader wants to tell you about.

That's what I feel the effect the Rashi's Daughters trilogy ought to have because all the characters were shaped by Torah and Talmud study an even smaller minority interest in those days than now, and much less accessible then than now.

But the comments on amazon are not explaining points of Talmud that you need to understand the character motivation, or what the reader learned from the novel that they applied to life with some success.

On the SimeGen Group on facebook, fans are always talking about whether they "identify" with Sime or Gen.  Non-Jewish readers of this trilogy are not saying that for the time it took to read Anton's books they knew what it felt like to be a Jew in Medieval France.  They got a glimpse of life in Medieval France, they didn't live there for a time.

Fans of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels often relate how they "grew up on Darkover."

Note how Robert A. Heinlein's fans talk about how his novels inspired them to learn math and science.  Or Isaac Asimov's fans.  Fans of Star Trek talk about how Roddenberry's creation led them into career tracks.

The comments on Rashi's Daughters are not relating how  people are dashing off to learn the real Torah and Talmud after becoming enchanted with her fantasy version of Torah and Talmud.  How many are reporting they enrolled their kids in Yeshiva?  But science fiction fans who grew up on Heinlein have kids on track to become famous astronomers, N.A.S.A. engineers, etc.

Keep in mind, it's my opinion that Anton wrote these novels as a polemic in modern feminism touting feminism to young Jewish women, hoping they would become feminists not Torah scholars.  Oil and water.  Some readers react to the oil and some to the water.

There are technical, writer-craft, reasons for that contrast in response between Heinlein/Roddenberry and Anton.

It is not a difference in the basic material or the story.  No place or time could be more alien to the modern reader than a Jewish Quarter in a small French town during the Crusades and the fall of Rome -- Darkover was easier to relate to.

Anton's historical Jews are alien to the modern Jew, and the dangers of Medieval France are just the same as in any Historical Romance with knights in shining armor, damsels in distress, and arranged marriages.

It is a difference in the application of writing craft techniques.  It's not that Science is more interesting than Torah.  It's simply a difference in how the "researched" (or factual) material is used to generate the fictional structure.

Being a professional writer means being able to get the reader-response you aim to get by using the tool that triggers that response.

Maggie Anton has probably gotten the reader response she was aiming for -- but not the response I would have aimed for had I decided to write about Rashi's Daughters.

And I'm only guessing, but I think she may not have known that the material about the Medieval Talmud Academies she had become enchanted with could be incorporated into a historical romance novel using the exact techniques perfected by science fiction writers decades ago.

The "technique" I'm referring to here is the "integration" of two (and sometimes more) of the basic techniques I've discussed on this blog in previous posts.  The integration tool that's most useful is "theme"  which we've discussed at length.

Anton has a theme.  I suspect it might best be stated as "Feminism is not new."

To illustrate that theme, she's created an alternate universe fantasy history.  Since she failed to use the Science Fiction techniques I'm discussing (she may know them and just didn't use them) her readers are calling her down for inaccurate or bad history -- possibly because her readers haven't read a lot of alternate-history fantasy such as Katherine Kurtz pioneered.

Her readers are miffed at the historical errors because Anton didn't lull them into a "suspension of disbelief" by telegraphing that she knows the "real" history that the reader already knows, but will now play a fun game re-arranging that history to tell a story that will pose interesting questions.

She could have created Rashi as a cross between Spock and Sherlock Holmes that would have rocked this nation.  She didn't.  Rashi himself hardly gets a word in edgewise, and when he does, it isn't the word "Logical" which would have been the author's wink at the reader soliciting the suspension of disbelief.  

The readers who don't know enough to spot her historical errors believe her version of history and like it, maybe prefer it.  Other readers are distressed by ignorant readers being taught inaccuracies, with never a clue that this is actually fantasy.

And then there are the real nuggets of historical fact Anton has uncovered which contradict what people in the modern world think they know about Rashi's time and lifestyle!

The knowledgeable reader rejects those nuggets along with the warped facts, not being able to distinguish one from the other -- all for the lack of writing techniques, most especially Research-Plot integration.

All that could have been avoided by treating the hard facts, the warped-facts, and the imaginary facts with a science fiction writer's techniques.  Poul Anderson comes to mind.  Vernor Vinge.

The readers who are calling her down for her historical inaccuracies have completely missed enjoying the Romance stories in this trilogy because their attention was distracted from the foreground story to the background setting.

Please note that the number of reviews Amazon has posted on Anton's novels far exceeds those on my novels.  There are a lot of technical (internet world related) reasons for that (Amazon has erased lots of reviews posted on my titles as they upgraded their computers).

But there is also the fact that Anton's work hits a far more popular topic than I have ever tackled, and was very well published to its exact audience at precisely the time Amazon was growing fastest.

One would conclude I have no business dissecting her product, but should rather be emulating it.

But I have read Marion Zimmer Bradley's SF/Fantasy novels, especially the hottest Alien Romance novel I've ever read, her Planet Wreckers.  I have read the Lensman Series (oh, did I have a crush on Kimball Kinnison and a case of envy for his red headed Soul Mate).  I have read C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner and Chanur series.  I have read  Ursula LeGuinn's Left Hand of Darkness.  I have read all of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's St. Germain novels, and a lot of her historical horror novels.  I've read a lot of historical novels (a certain Scotland based historical time travel series pops to mind.)  I used to be a Western Romance fan!  I have read dozens of Vampire Romance novels with varying "rules" for the Vampire species.  And I've read all of Robert A. Heinlein, and dozens of others who blend real science, imaginary science, and a special "take" on human personality seamlessly into their plots.

I somehow don't "hear" an echo of that kind of reading exposure behind the reviews of Maggie Anton's novels by those who liked them.

If you don't know what can be done with the Research-Plot integration technique, you won't miss it at all, and you'll think Anton's novels are really fine novels.

If you read the novels that are there, it's true that they are good.  But I'm a writer.  I read the novel that could have been there and compare it to the novel that is there -- if they're not the same, I try to figure out what to change to make them the same.

In this case it's the Integration techniques that are missing.

As I said above, the plotting technique choice didn't work as well as other choices might have.

Anton's books aren't actually "novels" in the structural and technical sense.  They are strings of anecdotes lightly glued together.  That's what produces many reader comments about "couldn't put it down."  The reader will race through the anecdotes with the feeling that the beginning of the story is imminent, and then find themselves at the last page of the volume thinking they've read a novel.   They didn't.  They read a book, yes, but not a novel. 

Perhaps I just have higher standards in Romance Novels than the readers who loved this trilogy because I found the structural and technique omissions glaring and jarring.

None of the writers I admire who have written novels  blending facts you can get out of an encyclopedia with imaginary characters, real historical characters, and a specific idea of how the world's affairs have been managed, are being managed, and might become managed, would ever have failed to make this integration of plot and research smooth and in-detectible.

As far as I can tell just from reading, Anton made no attempt to blend research and plot, nevermind  create a smooth emulsion.

I learned how to do that integration by hatching an ambition to write like those writers I listed above.  I dissected their work to find out how they did it, then applied that technique to what I had to say, and according to the responses I've been getting on the SIMEGEN Group on Facebook, I succeeded.

Most of you who have read this far must be very frustrated because I'm not laying out exactly how to do this Integration yet.  I'm going to try to explain it, but I am pretty sure many busy readers of this column need time to read at least one of the Anton novels and possibly to explore Sime~Gen.

Meanwhile here is an example from Rashi's Daughters Book III, Rachel -- of a bit of Anton's research which sits like "oil" on top of the emotional waters of her story.  And don't yell.  Last week I did promise you a spoiler and a connection to House of Zeor, and here it is.
---------QUOTE FROM BOOK III RACHEL p353 of the Trade paperback --The main character is talking to a trading partner who deals in dye and wool.-------------

..."But why are some black?"

"The abbess at Notre-Dame-aux-Nonnains was inquiring after fabric so I asked Simon to prepare some for her," Rachel explained.  Nuns took a vow of poverty, but the local abbess came from a noble family and refused to wear anything but the highest quality fabrics.

Simon turned to Pesach.  "True black is one of the most difficult shades to obtain.  Each dyer has his secret formula; mine involves lamp soot."  He motioned the pair back indoors, where he slowly unrolled a small bolt of brilliant purple.

Rachel gasped.  "This is exquisite."  She couldn't resist stroking the material.  "I thought Eliezer couldn't find any Tyrian purple, or did you mix scarlet and indigo?" 

Simon allowed Pesach to answer.  "I found some, although Eliezer judged it too expensive.  But the other dye merchants in Toledo said Tyrian purple was particularly scarce this year, so I gambled and bought some on credit."

-----------END QUOTE-------
 
Now there are some obscure facts about the beginnings of the dye industry that few people know, and it's inherently interesting.  It is related to the world of this novel because Rachel is in business with another of her sisters who raises sheep for wool and had to import rams from England to get the kind of wool that can take the expensive dyes of the time.  I know this stuff is true from other sources.

This snatch of dialogue advances the plot element of the side-business of cloth merchanting the lead character is in.  It's not wholly extraneous, and it reveals a lot about the trade-world around this little village.  Worse, all the characters in the scene already know all this and have no business talking as if they don't.  Maybe the scarcity and trade details might be discussed in dialogue - but there's really no dramatic reason for this dialogue. 

If you examine the scene this dialogue is in, and compare it to the discussions we've had here about scene structure and dialogue, you'll see that the scene isn't actually a "scene" -- there's no conflict driving the scene, no rising action, no emotional change, and no climax to the scene, leading to a hook onto the next scene.  The author may believe that all these elements are in the scene, because she tags the end of the scene with a worded thought about her husband who is neglecting the cloth business for his studies in astronomy.

See my blog post of DECEMBER 27, 2011 - Dialogue Part 2 - On And Off The Nose

Anton's Rachel character's husband (the son-in-law of Rashi) is, in this fantasy, involved in the studies in Spain where astronomers may have figured out that the Earth revolves around the Sun centuries before Galileo -- and very possibly those Moorish inspired Spanish Jews may be the source of Galileo's inspiration, or he might have originated the idea on his own.  You can see why I love this trilogy!

There's no reason for this scene, though, except to showcase some of the research the writer did.  You could cut this exchange about dyes and you wouldn't lose anything except that "window" into the "world" of Medieval France.  It's decoration.  It's nice.  But it's not essential.  It says to me that the writer just couldn't bear to leave out all that hard work she did, so she couched it in dialogue and used Rachel's business venture as an excuse to include it.  If I were the editor, I'd have cut it with a big red X through it.  (my editors did that to me a lot; I learned)

To me, personally, though, this  bit of dialogue is the best thing in the whole trilogy! 

This obscure bit about black dye being difficult, proprietary secret, and very easy to spot against the kinds of colors cloth had been able to hold in those days was, I thought, common knowledge for at least 10 years before I wrote House of Zeor and invented "Farris Black" as a special color.  I learned it so long before writing House of Zeor that I have no memory of learning it, I just know it. 

Jean Lorrah, who joined me writing Sime~Gen after Unto Zeor, Forever was written, did not know this historical fact about black cloth dye and I had forgotten how I knew it and couldn't prove it when she challenged me.

My fictional House of Zeor is famous in the textile business, in the crude bathtub chemistry of dye manufacture and wool dying.  They do all kinds of small-batch chemistry that's related to textiles, agrochemistry, and medicinals.  Nowhere in any of the 12 volumes in this Universe is there any dialogue even vaguely resembling this snatch I've quoted for you. 

When the Zeor Householding members are faced with the problem of identifying a particular genetic line of people who are medically vulnerable, Zeor does that by clothing them in this very special black -- it's used on edging, fringes, belts, emblems, medical case file flags and chevron stripes, and on entire clothing ensembles at different points in the several thousand years of Zeor's history. 

It's always referred to as Farris Black -- not just any black.  This is a special color, a shade that leaps right out at you.  You can't miss it.  Over the centuries of the Sime~Gen saga, it becomes the custom and eventually a rule with the force of law that ONLY those of the Farris genetic strain may wear this color.  Nobody else would want to -- it could be a life or death issue if you were treated medically as if you were Farris.  Later, when it's not so special, special shapes and items become the label. 

Nowhere in the Sime~Gen novels do two characters who already know all about the dye business discuss the sources or applications of dyes. 

So there's the Sime~Gen/Rashi connection I promised you last week.  Farris Black. 

Eventually here, we'll probably talk about the second published Sime~Gen Novel (a novel I modeled on the typical "Doctor Novel") Unto Zeor, Forever, (my first award winner) and the medical profession research I did for that one -- and what Robert A. Heinlein said about it after he read it.  Of all the novels I've written, that was the only one I deliberately did research for with the specific intent of crafting that particular novel from the research. 

All other research I've used in my novels has been like that Farris Black example, something I've known so long I don't know where I learned it.  Many times, though, I have had to go look up details that I wanted to include to fact-check before including.  In some instances, I've used astronomical calculators and programs that help predict the orbit of a world around another sun.  But Unto Zeor, Forever is a specifically researched-to-write novel.  I hope you won't find any evidence of research in that novel, though. 

So you might want to read Unto Zeor, Forever first and compare it to Rashi's Daughters. 

Rashi's Daughters also has a whole lot of medical research into medieval and Jewish Medieval medicine and especially midwifery larded into the text.  Some of that medical research is well integrated, and some is not.  Many times whole birthing incidents are incorporated simply to illustrate the midwifery techniques.  The birth of a child who will become a significant influence on the course of history makes it seem that the birthing scene advances the plot -- but often that Integration technique just isn't there. 

Perhaps you want to find pair of Historical Romance novels to compare.  You want to find a novel that has obviously been researched for decades, that the writer is so very proud of their research and the publisher is selling it on the authenticity of the research.  And then find one which has even more information in it but you can't tell it's been researched at all -- you can only see that some of the things in it are real facts, and some things obviously made up just for fun.

Your personal library may already have two really good examples to work on.

Once you've tried to figure out what one writer did that the other writer did not do (and which you'd rather emulate) -- then move on to the next Part in this blog series "Research-Plot Integration in Historical Romance."

By the way, I learned this method of deconstruction, dissection, and distillation of techniques to discover and apply writing techniques to my own work from a correspondence course on writing from The Famous Writer School (which I do not recommend at all!).

I've seen how Blake Snyder applied this dissection method to create his SAVE THE CAT! film genres -- and I don't think he got it from the Famous Writer's School.

You don't need a teacher to learn this.  But you do need a pair of books you didn't write, one of which represents the kind of book you want to write.  Find and study two such novels, and come back next week for more thoughts on how to learn and apply Research-Plot Integration to your own work.

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

Exile, Execute, Incarcerate, Enslave... or what?

How do you handle an undesirable prisoner? (In fiction, specifically in alien romance fiction.)

In Lexx (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexx), criminals' organs were harvested on a mechanized assembly line without the benefit of anaesthetics or any other drugs (of course!) and the remains were utilized as organic fuel (food) for the dragonfly-like, organic spaceship, Lexx.

Some victors would play with their prisoners, or with their body parts. For instance, on the FIFA site, http://www.fifa.com/classicfootball/history/game/historygame2.html it claims

"One theory is that the game is Anglo-Saxon in origin. In both Kingston-on-Thames and Chester, local legend has it the game was played there for the first time with the severed head of a vanquished Danish prince."

That appears to be an isolated, and not particularly efficient solution to the problem. Possibly the Orcs use of
severed heads as cannonballs (in LOTR) was more practical, and also more demoralizing to the enemy.

Ancient Romans would either enslave prisoners, or make gladiators of them, or assimilate them. In one of the Star Wars Prequels (Clone Wars?) there were gladiator pits, but inconvenient prisoners were intended for amusing execution, rather than being given a fighting chance.

At one time, the British exiled prisoners, shipping them off to "the colonies" or "the Antipodes", for instance, which has always struck me as rather unfair to the native peoples. One of Anne McCaffrey's series (Freedom's Landing) used captives as experimental colonists, to demonstrate whether or not a new world was suitable for annexation.

At other times, the British housed prisoners in unseaworthy "hulks", or prison ships. Americans used islands... and still do. Russians sent prisoners off to Siberia. Captain Kirk was sent to an isolated prison camp to work in the mines on the frozen asteroid Rura Penthe, in The Undiscovered Country.

In theory, someone imprisoned on their own planet has a chance of escape without outside help. Space is an insuperable barrier to escape, unless one has rescuers, or magical time-travel abilities, or is able to overpower the guards and steal a space shuttle or stow away on a supply ship.

Riddick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riddick ) is a good example of a science fiction convict who makes good --sort of-- without the benefit of organized rehabilitation.

Assuming that one wanted to write an alien romance about someone who had escaped from long term incarceration, would it also be a Revenge story, such as The Count of Monte Christo? Otherwise, perhaps they could have done their time, and been released legally. Or they could be pardoned, rightly or wrongly.

Here is an interesting comparison of slavery versus imprisonment: http://www.stalags.com/ and also an explanation of post traumatic stress disorder. It seems to me that being wrongly convicted, and forced to work in prison would combine the worst of both situations.

Here is an article about the need to rehabilitate prisoners.
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/05/john_wetzel_pa_secretary_of_co.html

That does not account for political prisoners. In a Machaivellian world, one might wish to turn prisoners into Manchurian candidates, or otherwise mess with their minds to make them useful. But, if they are celebrities, and recognizable, what does one do?

"The Man In The Iron Mask" would not be a plausible plot line unless one's world was a world of superstition, and one believed that to kill a king (for instance) would damn one's immortal soul, or set a precedent that might lead to one's own execution.

Honestly, if one were evil enough to frame an innocent man --or arbitrarily throw a rival into the science fiction equivalent of an oubliette-- is there any plausible reason why one would not kill them?

Time Cloak

Scientists have discovered how to “hide” a moment in time:

Gap in Time

True, this phenomenon was produced only on an extreme subatomic level for an infinitesimal instant, but raise it to the macro level and think of the SF possibilities. At one point the article compares the concealment to an invisibility cloak. I was reminded of Spider Robinson’s LADY SLINGS THE BOOZE and its predecessors on the same premise, stories of devices that can stop time (sort of). The wielder of such an instrument appears to vanish because he’s moving so fast compared to the surrounding environment that he can’t be seen, and everybody else looks frozen to him. The same idea appeared in a STAR TREK episode. This real-life “time cloak,” however, doesn’t use the acceleration method. Apparently the experimenters literally removed a tiny splinter of time from the normal time stream.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Research-Plot Integration in Historical Romance Part 1

Lately, we've been getting into what I consider "advanced" writing lessons. 

"Advanced" doesn't actually mean you can't do it if you haven't done the previous work.  But it does mean you have to be able to walk and chew gum, juggle some plates, wrangle a passel of kids, and shout at the mailman not to molest the dog, all at the same time.

Some people learn better under pressure, some people don't want to know how they do what they do, and some (like me) prefer to read the last chapter of the textbook first, then browse quickly through the first chapter and try the exercises and problems in the middle before deciding if there's anything worth learning in this textbook.

So here we are in the "middle" of learning to craft a novel, Romance or otherwise.  I'm just more comfortable with the Romance plot dynamics than with plain, pure, action, or the kind of Mystery where the detective isn't personally involved in the issues raised by the crime and criminal.

In searching for clear writing lessons for you, I've stumbled on a trilogy of books, published by PLUME an imprint of PENGUIN BOOKS (huge, international publisher - this is the big time publishing venue, folks!) which I'm sure the author and the editor believe are novels.  And now a lot of writing students will think so, too, just because these got published by a big publisher (and are selling well.)  They will be imitated. 

If you have objected to my explanations of the importance of structure in crafting a novel, you may consider the high profile publishing of these three books to prove your point.  But you might change your mind about that after you read some of one of these novels. 

Some people, readers not writers or editors, who've read these books think they're novels, too. 

In my judgement, they aren't novels, and I'm going to try to explain why I think that. 

The explanation may not mean anything to you unless you read at least part of one of these books and contrast it to something like, say Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's St. Germain novels (or many of her Historical Horror genre items).  But I'm sure most of you have read dozens if not hundreds of good Historical Romances, not to mention alternate history and time travel Romance. 

These books are Historicals, set between 1040 and 1105 C.E.

Katherine Kurtz's Deryni novels are set in that period (almost - she uses the 900's as a model) but in an alternate universe.  If you haven't read the Deryni series, you probably need to.  Start with Deryni Rising and move quickly on to see how Katherine's writing craftsmanship developed very quickly -- then contrast that with the 3 novels I'm talking about here. 

Katherine Kurtz structures trilogies correctly.  C. J. Cherryh structures trilogies correctly (though her earliest published work has a few nice flaws that you can learn from). 

This author, Maggie Anton, did not structure her trilogy with that kind of high-craft precision.  She used a different technique, also in wide use, but not nearly as effective.  I don't know if that's because she'd never read Cherryh and Kurtz or if she chose a technique inappropriate to her material on purpose, or if she didn't know there exists a plethora of techniques for handling this kind of material so she didn't know she had a choice to make.  I don't know Maggie Anton personally, though I know Cherryh and Kurtz personally and learned from them (we learned from Marion Zimmer Bradley and I don't know if Maggie Anton ever read MZB or met her). 

Maggie Anton on Amazon

That link goes to the product page on Amazon that lists 4 items by Maggie Anton, this trilogy and a book about the subject.  I couldn't find anything else with that byline, and I don't know if this author writes under other bylines. 

From the list of what I don't know, you can see that I can only discuss this trilogy on the basis of what's actually in the stories and how they are structured -- and what might have been done with the raw research material.  I can point you to where the various techniques I have discussed on this blog were not used, and so you can judge if the lack makes the text awkward or boring. 

The trilogy does contain arranged marriages and true-love marriages, accidentally marrying a gay guy (or maybe he's bi though others he knows are gay), and even a bit of Medieval applied magic to spur sexuality within marriage.  Each novel focuses on one of three sisters who have no brothers to follow in their father's footsteps -- the underlying theme is feminist.  In fact, it's a very strong feminist polemic in spots. 

There are some rather graphically detailed sex scenes, but not many.  If that's what you read Romance for, these books will disappoint. 

There are epidemic scenes where the disease is attributed to demons and the cures include blood letting and amulets against demons, and other standard practices in that time-frame.  Great material for modern fantasy or Paranormal Romance. 

Each of these three is billed as "A novel of Love" -- not specifically genre Romance -- "in Medieval France."  On that, it actually delivers.   

The trilogy seems to me to be even more awkward to market and sell than to write.

I'm going to discuss all three at once here, and I'll be rather more hyper-critical of the writing, the research, and the story itself than I usually am.  I may say some things that might seem somewhat unkind, perhaps undeserved, about the author of this trilogy. 

But I'm not talking to the author, or even about the author or editor since I don't know them.  I'm analyzing a swatch of writing that I think needed more rewrite before publishing. 

The other item in the pitch for these novels is the assertion that the research is good, deep and accurate.  And as far as I can tell, that's mostly true. 

Now to the third element in these novels that you need to keep in mind.

The novels are about the 3 daughters of a Talmudic scholar (the Talmud being the transcription of the explanation of the Torah (the first 5 books of the Bible, the story of Moses) that was given to Moses by God, the same explanation that was given to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, then on Mount Sinai for Moses to give to the people and lead them to the Promised Land. 

This Talmudic scholar, known as Rashi, is studied today, and most printings of the Torah have either footnotes or extensive commentary by Rashi.  Rashi also wrote a commentary on the Talmud, which is studied today.  Rashi wrote the introductory commentary, the elementary and literal commentary (not the esoteric commentary known as Kaballah).  It's almost impossible to enter the study of this material by any other route than by studying Rashi.

Studying Torah without having heard of Rashi would be like studying Geometry without having heard of Aristotle or Pythagoras. Or maybe like studying astronomy without having heard of Kepler.

So Maggie Anton picked out one whopping HUGE and important subject area to write about, the almost unknown 3 daughters of Rashi whose husbands and sons are also almost as famous as Rashi because of how they continued his commentaries, and commented on his commentaries, and founded Talmudic academy traditions of their own.  Their mothers, the 3 daughters of these novels, are lost in obscurity -- and now rescued by Maggie Anton in a monumental feat of research and meticulous deductive imagination. 

The research had to have been as difficult as what Katherine Kurtz did to write her George Washington saga, (during which research, I was treated to a blow-by-blow description of the feats required to gain access to obscure material)



Or her WWII novel about the magical battle for Britain against the Nazis.



To create the Romance novel trilogy, Anton had to create and add a great deal of material, just as these other writers had to do.  My theory is that Anton was in over her head. 

So here are Anton's novels.  In the next parts of this blog-series, we'll get into spoilers, and even note The Sime~Gen Connection to Anton's trilogy.  And there is a connection, but not philosophical.  It has to do with research into medieval techniques for making dye for wool!  Also for making woolen cloth, though I never mentioned that in House of Zeor. 







There is a Kindle version, but it's in that "overpriced" range at $12.99 at least at the time I'm writing this.  There are a lot of used copies, probably because they aren't rereadable or keepers.

I don't think these books are worth their price, in and of themselves.  If you can get them from a lending library, or find a used copy, so much the better.  You may want to take marginal notes as you learn from analyzing this material. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Feisty, Sassy, Snarky, or Just Obnoxious?

I recently read a paranormal anthology that I won’t name because I’m going to say some negative things about two of the stories. In both of them, the kick-ass werewolf heroine has to work together with the hero in a crisis against her wishes. In each case, the heroine takes an instant dislike to the hero and shows it with outspoken rudeness. These reactions appear motivated only by snap judgments based on first impressions. In the first story, the hero is a vampire and the heroine doesn’t like vampires in general; in the second, the woman’s aversion comes from a quick decision about what type of man the character is. In other words, the characters’ initial dislike for the heroes springs mostly from prejudice, not an attractive quality for a protagonist to exhibit. The guys might actually be arrogant jerks, but we see no real evidence of that hypothesis before the women preemptively jump to that conclusion. Any not so gentlemanly behavior displayed by the heroes could just as well be a response to the heroines’ hostility.

Of course, the “slap, slap, kiss” motif (as TVtropes.org labels it) has been around in romance since at least Shakespeare. Sparks flying in a spirited argument often ignite sexual sparks. Also, the feisty heroine who stands up for herself to everyone, including the hero, has become one of the most popular character types in current romance fiction. Few readers would accept a timid, submissive heroine these days. But there’s a difference between feisty or “kick-ass” and plain insufferable. To me, a character who goes out of her way to pick fights with a man she’s just met comes across as the latter. Hostility between hero and heroine needs to have a believable motive. That’s a case where “show not tell” is vital—the author should demonstrate in action that there’s a good reason why two sympathetic characters we’re rooting for nevertheless interact like the proverbial cat and dog.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Story Springboards Part 1: Art Heists by Patricia McLinn

Today we have a wonderful article by Patricia McLinn on the romantic aspects of the Art Theif.  We're all fans of Remington Steele, and It Takes A Thief, and now White Collar, but what is it about these television shows that are so fascinating to Romance readers?

Oh, and if you haven't read any Patricia McLinn titles, oh please do look up her novels!  See end of her post for how to find her publications. 

-----------GUEST POST BY PATRICA McLINN ------------

            Fiction, as it turns out, is way better than fact when it comes to art heists.

            But that’s starting at the end of this blog, and I should take you back to the start, which was my offhand Tweet wondering why art heists stir the imagination. That sparked a Twitter/e-mail exchange on the topic with my esteemed blog hostess.

            From what seemed to be off the top of her head, Jacqueline listed nearly a dozen angles a fiction writer could pursue while playing in the art heist sandbox

--There's the historical importance - holding a piece of 
history 

--There's profit - the black market fence has a client 
if you can get the painting or statue 

--There's stealing it to keep it just for yourself, 
very personal, very intimate. 

--There's maybe the thief is a reincarnation of the 
painter or the subject and just wants the thing and 
doesn't know why? 

--There's the simple thing like climbing a mountain
 -- break through their security because it's there 
(like hackers). 

--There's just hurting the owner because you don't 
like him/her/it. 

--There's striking back at the nose-in-the-air 
art-patron public because you don't like them. 

--There's "liberating" the art from the 
dog-in-the-manger owner so that posterity can 
have it (stealing from the Nazis). 

--There's keeping it from destruction in a 
shooting war (think recent events in Egypt). 

--There are all the things about Art that make 
it interesting -- and then there's the whole 
D&D board game fascination with STEALING (the 
Thief character with all sorts of sub-traits). 

--There's the whole "magical" dimension of how 
great art depicts or connects to the human 
Group Mind -- and all the voodoo that 
can be done that way.

            As a novelist, that list has me salivating.  However, I also have a background in journalism, including being an editor at the Washington Post for mumble-mumble years. As Lawrence Block said in the title of one of his wonderful books on writing, I love TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT – but I want to know when I’m telling lies. Mark Twain gave great advice: “Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.”

            So, I started checking into why the public finds art heists romantic and alluring, and the psychology behind art heists.

            Sorry, folks, the experts agree that to the extent that the public finds art heists romantic and alluring, it’s because we don’t know the truth behind them. (Note to anyone writing an article about art theft: Cary Grant went after jewels, not art in TO CATCH A THIEF. Saw that wrong several places.)

            Former Scotland Yard detective Charles Hill is reported to have said that stealing great works is less a daring act than a sign of an unimaginative thief [[http://www.simoleonsense.com/the-psychology-of-art-thieves]], because the thief is doomed to obtaining nothing near the true value of the art.

            Yet thieves do steal art – reportedly as many as 20,000 pieces a year in Italy. [[http://www.artcrime.info/facts.htm]]  Why?

            Motivation One: USA Today [[http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-05-23-Parisartheist-motivation_N.htm]] quoted Joel Silberberg, Director of the Division of Forensic Psychiatry at Northwestern University, as saying, “If you look back historically at other pieces of stolen art, the motivation is idiosyncratic. Look at the Mona Lisa's theft — taken from The Louvre in Paris in 1911 by an Italian patriot. He resented that one of Italy's greatest pieces of art was being displayed in France. So you get individual motivation there, or a political motivation.”

            (For more on the 100th anniversary of the Mona Lisa theft earlier this year, click here. [[http://blogs.artinfo.com/secrethistoryofart/tag/kempton-bunton]].)

            Motivation Two: Said Hill: “Then there’s the trophy-hunting art thieves. They don’t make much money at all and cause themselves endless aggravation. But they enjoy doing it. It gives them a buzz.”

            Let’s call those Crackpot 1 and Crackpot 2.

            Motivation Three:  Money.  A few of the money-motivated art thieves might be stealing to fulfill an order from an unscrupulous art collector, but not many.

            Instead, according to the experts, most of the money garnered from art thefts goes to –

            And here’s where facts will forever change my view of the fiction.

             -- organized crime and terrorism.

            Yikes. Makes the crackpots look appealing by contrast. But the crackpots are in the minority when it comes to art thieves.

            According to the website of the Association for Researching into Crimes against Art (known as ARCA[[http://www.artcrime.info/facts.htm]]): “Most art crime since the 1960s is perpetrated either by, or on behalf of, international organized crime syndicates.”

            ARCA, citing information it “compiled from sources including Interpol, the FBI, Scotland Yard, Carabinieri, independent research and ARCA projects,” also says, “Art crime represents the third highest grossing criminal enterprise worldwide, behind only drugs and arms trafficking. It brings in $2-6 billion per year, most of which goes to fund international organized crime syndicates.”

            That just ground my image of the dashing art thief into dust.

            Two other areas of art theft (though not heists) that greatly concern the experts are fraud/forgeries (so the Audrey Hepburn-Peter O’Toole movie HOW TO STEAL A MILLION is practically a documentary, right?) and theft by destruction, most often perpetrated by repressive groups (think of the Taliban’s destruction of the Bamyan statues.)

            So, have the facts taken all the fun out of the fiction?

            Not, necessarily.  First, of course, there’s that whole fiction thing -- as in we make stuff up.  As fiction writers, we don’t have to adhere to the most statistically likely thing to happen.

            Also, there are some intriguing elements among the facts.

            Take ARCA.

            Among other things, it offers a blog with current art-theft news [[http://art-crime.blogspot.com/]]. (Forgive them the incorrect “it’s”.)

            There’s also the history of Noah Charney, founding director of ARCA. He says he developed an interest in art crime while researching a novel, THE ART THIEF.

            “I am most interested in the field from a practical standpoint—how the academic study can help to inform contemporary law enforcement and art protection,” he says on his website[[http://www.noahcharney.com/bio.htm]]. In June 2006 he held a conference “in Cambridge entitled ‘Art Theft: History, Prevention, Detection, Solution.’  It was attended by the heads of the FBI, Scotland Yard, and Carabinieri Art squads (Vernon Rapley, and Col. Giovanni Pastore) as well as academics and art professionals with interest, if not previous experience, in the study of art crime”  and since then, he says, he has forged alliances with the law enforcement experts.

            How about pitting a Charney-esque character against a terrorist mastermind in a clock-ticking effort to protect, oh, say, a Vermeer exhibit?

            If that doesn’t get your fiction-writing juices going, how about this:

            The should-be-world-renowned Museum of Bad Art (MOBA), in Somerville, Mass., has been the victim of two art heists. 

            First, the painting Eileen was taken in 1966. According to the museum’s Wikipedia entry [[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Bad_Art]], “The museum offered a reward of $6.50 for the return of Eileen,” and donors later increasing the reward to $36.73. To no avail. A decade later, someone claiming to be the thief demanded a $5,000 ransom. MOBA refused. The painting was returned.

            Despite a sign proclaiming "Warning. This gallery is protected by fake video cameras", another criminal struck in 2004, leaving a note demanding $10 for Rebecca Harris' Self Portrait as a Drainpipe.  This time, the art was returned soon after the theft … with a $10 donation.

            If these heinous crimes don’t stir your imagination, you are far too stolid a soul to be writing fiction.

~ ~ ~  

Patricia McLinn [[http://www.PatriciaMclinn.com]] is the author of 26 novels, focusing (as much as she focuses on anything) on relationships.  Many are now available as e-books at the major outlets. She encourages you to purchase those she’s indie published (without overtly urging you not to buy those from a publisher.) Her first non-fiction book – WORD WATCH: A Writer’s Guide to the Slippery, Sneaky, and Otherwise Tricky -- draws on her mumble-mumble years as an editor at the Washington Post and a lifetime of cranky reading. Her first mystery will be released in June 2012, and at that time she will encourage you to buy from that publisher.

You can follow Patricia at Twitter [[http://twitter.com/PatriciaMcLinn]] and Facebook [[https://www.facebook.com/PatriciaMcLinn]]. WORD WATCH Tweets [[http://twitter.com/WordWatchBook]] and Facebooks [[https://www.facebook.com/WordWatchTheBook]] for itself.

 ---------- END GUEST POST BY PATRICIA MCLINN -----------

POSTED BY JACQUELINE LICHTENBERG

http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com



Part 2 of this series is at
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/04/story-springboards-part-2-tv-shows.html

Parts 3 and 4 will be:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/story-springboards-part-3-art-of.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/story-springboards-part-4-art-of.html

Happy Last Year

If every rational person, and every superstitious person came to the conclusion that the Mayans were correct, and that we will all go extinct this year (2012), how would your New Year's Resolutions be different?

You probably wouldn't pay your mortgage. Right? You might not bother to start dieting/exercising/stop smoking. There would be no point occupying Virgin Galactic or NASA, because they are unable to follow Stephen Hawking's advice and get a lucky few with pepper spray to that new, Earth-like planet that's been discovered.

In 2010, Stephen Hawking warned:

"I see great dangers for the human race ......

And

"....we are entering an increasingly dangerous period of our history. Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth, are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill."

He may have been thinking about radiation, global warming, and sustainability, rather than geo-political tensions and a level of social unrest that reminds me of the French Revolution... and apparently I am not alone, given that Governor Mitt Romney is quoted as comparing President Obama to the tragic queen of France, Marie Antoinette.

Governor Romney appears to be focusing on extravagance, and his unfair populist quote is historically suspect. No Historian, Mitt. Marie Antoinette got the short end of a very dirty stick from her contemporaries and from History.

However...

"....Marie Antoinette remained convinced of the divine right of kings. In coded letters from captivity, she describes the democratic ideal as a "tissue of absurdities"."

Apparently, the Commune Of Paris (think of a successful OWC) refused to allow Marie Antoinette a pair of nail scissors to trim her fingernails. (Think TSA).

Beaming back to Stephen Hawking.....
Is it possible that that Earth-like planet is already inhabited by intelligent beings? What if they are more intelligent than we are?

Hawking stated in an interview with The Times (of London, presumably), quoted here

"To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational”....The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like."

"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans," he allegedly told the AFP.

(Think "Independence Day". Or "An Ant's Life". )

"We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet," Hawking has suggested. "I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach."

Ironically, this is exactly what Hawking appears to suggest that we ought to do.

And then, there is the Internet, which is becoming increasingly lawless.... which is why I think of the French Revolution when confronting online advocates for the abolition of copyright (through mass uncivil disobedience/ignorance of the law, of what is in the Terms Of Service of the OSPs and ISPs contracts they signed).

I sometimes wonder why Internet Service Providers and Online Service Providers publish "Terms Of Service" and those lengthy Agreements that everyone scrolls through to click the "I Agree" box.

Does anyone know?

Since SocialGo, for example, has no duty to monitor the content of its users, does it post this for Brownie Points?

1. You will violate the Service Terms if you or any Users do any of the following:
1. Copy, reproduce, duplicate, upload, post, host, display or perform (publicly or otherwise), market, advertise, promote, distribute, transmit, or otherwise disseminate any content or materials (including, without limitation, any related data or information):
1. that are illegal or otherwise promote or encourage any illegal activity (including, without limitation, hacking, cracking, or the distribution of counterfeit software, or any products or services derived from any such activities); or
2. that you do not own or have permission to freely distribute; or
3. that violates any laws or regulations worldwide.

And, when users DO violate the Service Terms, and this is pointed out to Social Go, why does Social Go turn a blind eye? Because they can? (And even SOPA or IP Protect would allow them to continue to do so.)

Here is an example of what I'm talking about.

It's a cynical promotional gambit by a shameless alleged copyright infringer who sells (for a lifetime subscription of $9.95 paid via PayPal) thousands links to illegally uploaded Fiction e-books, audio books, music albums, For Dummies educational works (Wiley sues downloaders, folks!) first run movies including (allegedly) the new "Sherlock Holmes Game of Shadows", Real Steel,copyrighted games, software programs, and music albums.... including the new Disney compilation "Now That's What I Call Disney" six days before it officially went on sale on Amazon.

He is also paid (one assumes) by foreign site Filesonic.com, which pays commissions up to $17 per sale to resellers of Filesonic subscriptions (which make it possible to download a large file containing, for instance 380 For Dummies e-books), and which advertises "Make Money Sharing Links."

By the way, here's the joke of the century,

"Please note that FileSonic maintains a strict intellectual property policy. By using the service, you represent and warrant that you are the author and copyright owner and/or proper licensee with respect to any content and you further represent and warrant that no content violates the intellectual property rights of any third party."

Alas, Filesonic had a December promotion paying uploaders $35 for every 1,000 downloads. Do they think that Big Six bestselling authors really have the rights to undercut their publishers, and sell 1000 digital copies of their books for $35?

Via his groups on googlegroups and yahoogroups, the Freetard Bastard writes: (Approximately.... I have changed a few key words to protect the innocent.)

Celebrate the new year; grab vip membership for nothing!

Dear Members

Freetardbastard now offers standard digital parasites the opportunity to grab their 'lifetime' VIP membership to their club for nothing, to those that help spread the word!

All you have to do is simply invite 12 people (family, friends or work colleagues) to view their website... it's as easy as that, and you save $9.95

Full instructions can be found on the following page:

http://www.thefreetardgroup.com/images/vipfree.html

This is a nice bonus aimed at standard copyright infringers who are happy to promote the service and for those that can't afford to pay the VIP membership fee, but who would still like the extra benefits!

I wish you all a HAPPY AND PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR!

Regards

Max

FREETARD Club Admin

---

This message is being sent to you because you or the author are a member of ClubFreetard, a network created using SocialGO. If you are interested in creating your own network, please click here.

Disclaimer: Groups such as this change their name about as often as pirates change their underwear. To the best of my knowledge, none is to date called Freetard (prefer definition 2) so the links should go to a 404.

If no one can stop this sort of thing, and Google is allegedly spending a fortune to make sure no one can stop it, 2012 may not be the last year for the planet, but it could be the last year that American copyright law has any relevance. The Sans Culottes are occupying the Internet.

Happy New Year!

Holiday Greetings

Happy Yuletide! Keep in mind that Christmas officially lasts until January 6 (Epiphany, aka Twelfth Night). According to THE BATTLE FOR CHRISTMAS by Stephen Nissenbaum, in some parts of medieval Europe the celebratory season continued until February 2 (Candlemas, best known to us as Groundhog Day), when the agricultural labors of the new year had to begin. Nissenbaum's book reveals that the Puritans had good reasons, in their worldview, for banning Christmas festivities. The true "old-fashioned, traditional" Christmas wasn't what we think of. That family-centered holiday was invented in the nineteenth century. The REAL traditional Christmas would look to us like a combination of Halloween, Mardi Gras, Thanksgiving, and New Year's Eve. Besides the feasting that we've retained in our own customs, the season focused on heavy drinking, noisemaking, licentious behavior in general, reversal of social roles, and the lower classes wandering from house to house making more or less cheerful demands for food, drink, and money, as memorialized in wassailing songs. In most of premodern Europe (as Nissenbaum explains), December was the only part of the agricultural year when people had both leisure and plenty of food, the one time when fresh meat in abundance was available. It's interesting to contemplate how different life in that seasonal cycle was from our present-day culture, where refrigeration and global transport bring even the poorest of us a variety of foods even the rich couldn't have imagined in the preindustrial world. According to THE BATTLE FOR CHRISTMAS, it was just this pagan seasonal cycle that the Puritans wanted to obliterate. As Nissenbaum puts it, people had always celebrated the winter solstice with feasting and carousing, and the Church, in consecrating December 25 to the birth of Jesus, tacitly allowed the festivities to go on pretty much as they always had. Christmas "has always been a difficult holiday to Christianize."

From the very beginning of the family-centered Christmas in the Victorian era, commercialization has accompanied the holiday and observers have complained about greed obscuring the spirit of the season. C. S. Lewis in the 1950s wrote an essay about "Xmas" and Christmas, lamenting what he called "the commercial racket." Apparently some things haven't changed much in almost sixty years. Yet I realize in some ways Christmas as I knew it in childhood must have been quite different from my parents' childhood holidays in the 1930s. Likewise, our children and now grandchildren have had Christmases in some ways like "the ones we used to know" and in other ways clearly different.

Speaking of "the ones we used to know," how many people in the U.S. who grew up outside New England or the northern parts of the Midwest remember white Christmases? In most of the places we've lived that had snow at all, it was rare before January. Just one example of how culture and the media shape our expectations. My stepmother loved snow and always yearned for a white Christmas, something she probably never saw during her childhood in the tidewater area of North Carolina. Not to mention sleighs with bells!

Here's the full text of "Just Like the Ones We Used to Know" by Connie Willis, a humorous fantasy tale in which the wish for a white Christmas gets fulfilled all too thoroughly:

Just Like the Ones We Used to Know

If you watched the TV series BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, you’ll recall their solstice celebration, Winterfest, adapted for the conditions of their own small subculture. Imagine how our holidays will morph into new forms while retaining the "spirit" of their original meanings as we move forward through the twenty-first century and eventually travel from this planet into space.

And speaking of space, for a midwinter treat here's a page of links to holiday SF filk songs by Suzette Haden Elgin:

Ozarque's Journal

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Dialogue Part 2 - On And Off The Nose

Part 1 of this series was not labeled Part 1, but it is:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/dialogue-as-tool.html

This Part 2 is an advanced lesson on writing.  Below you'll find a links to a plethora of relevant posts I've done here previously, because the subject of Dialogue integrates all the techniques I've discussed. 

And no, we're not talking here about characters who talk "down their nose" at other characters, or who stick their nose into others' business.  The metaphor is about "hitting it on the nose."  Saying exactly what you mean, defining things exactly, is "hitting it on the nose."  You "hit it on the nose" when you "reveal" something very concrete and specific about a murky topic, when you clarify matters, when you eliminate confusion, when you shatter an illusion. 

The term "on the nose dialogue" is from screenwriting, well, play writing too.  On the nose dialogue is one reason that a script would be returned unread.  If the first line of dialogue on page one is "on the nose" the script will be rejected. 

This is often true in novel or story writing as well, though you might get 5 pages to show you know how to keep dialogue off the nose. 

There is nothing more "murky" than the emotional life of a human being.  When you "reveal" that inner dialogue as spoken dialogue, you are writing dialogue that is "on the nose."  It's a tool in the writer's toolbox, and it can be used to devastating artistic effect, but first the writer must master that tool. 

And the first step toward mastery is definition. 

"Advertising copy" is a blatant example of "on the nose" writing.

An ad just says what it means.  If it doesn't, you get the effect we see with so many TV commercials (which I  have recommended you study for "show don't tell" techniques) where there's an amusing image or sequence, and you can't recall what product the ad is selling.

"Aflac" uses the repetition of the duck advising the injured that they need this insurance -- relying on the silly quack sound of the company's name to nail the message on the nose.

"Verizon" is having great success following Suzi's Lemonade stand to international corporation because of ease of communication using Verizon's tools -- but the commercial, while engaging, and on-the-nose about communications, doesn't differentiate Verizon from AT&T.  Suzy might do as well with AT&T or another carrier, we can't tell from the commercial.  But I do remember Suzy and I do associate her with Verizon, so it's a success. 

Who can forget the "Energizer Bunny?" 

So advertisements have to be "on the nose."  If you're selling a better razor blade, show it in the garage in a puddle as months pass, and not rusting.  Show someone picking it up, putting it in a razor holder, and shaving with it -- no cuts.  If you're selling razor blades, show a razor blade.  Show how yours is different from Gillette's. 

That's on the nose. 

People, on the other hand, in real life, don't talk "on the nose."

One of the reasons most books on the craft of writing don't actually help new writers learn the craft is that such books are usually about the craft -- i.e. OFF the nose, off the topic. 

If you pick up a writing craft textbook, what do you expect to find inside?  What topic should it cover?

As I was learning this craft, (and even today) the topic I keep hoping to find inside "how to" books on writing is what you do with your mind to create a story others will enjoy.  You know about the craft or you wouldn't have found the book.  Now you want to know the craft itself.  You want to do it. 

You need the concepts, some examples, and some ways to isolate specific craft functions and practice them in isolation. 

That's like a piano student learning scales instead of whole musical compositions. 

After you learn the scale, you try a short, small, composition using that scale, and you perform the composition.  You don't start learning piano by writing your own compositions (most don't.)  You start learning by performing someone else's compositions. 

Writing is also a performing art, as I have said I learned from my first professional writing teacher, Alma Hill.

I've introduced you to some of the "scales" involved in writing: worldbuilding, conflict, theme, plot, characterization, etc.  And now we're working on "Chopsticks" our first composition, "Dialogue." 

What exactly is dialogue?  Where do you get it? 

In real life, women tend to keep their conversation (not dialogue; that's for fictional characters) farther away from the nose than men do.  Workplace interactions (men or women in the USA) tend to be more on the nose than household interactions.

Of all the topics people converse about, Relationship and especially the Love Relationship, usually stay the farthest off-the-nose.  They have to be off the nose if they are to communicate real, reliable, meaning.

Yep.  The way to be reliably understood is to avoid saying what you mean! 

In other words, in certain circumstances, to communicate you have to say what you mean, and in other circumstances you have to avoid saying what you mean in order to be understood. 

Writers have to take that variation in behavior into account when creating dialogue.

Characters will speak differently to each other depending on where they are and what they're doing, as well as on who they are, and who they are to each other.  Every line of dialogue you create is a synthesis  of all the techniques we've explored so far. 

Perhaps we should coin the term "dialogue-building" because writing dialogue is very much like worldbuilding. 

Dialogue is not a recording of real speech.  Dialogue is to real speech as a Japanese Brush Painting is to a Photograph.  Dialogue is emblematic of speech.  It's symbolic of speech. 

Ultimately, great dialogue gives the firm illusion of real speech. 

The line between a reader and a writer can easily be defined as the line between someone who perceives dialogue as speech, and someone who can see through that illusion to the gears-wheels-and-grease inside the dialogue that creates the illusion of speech.   

People speak to each other because they have something to say -- to that person. 

Many people get upset if you forward something they've written to you on to someone they don't even know (or worse, someone they don't like).  The reaction is, "I would have written it differently if I'd known so-and-so would see it."  People talk that way, too.  Think about how specific our phrasing is in terms of who we expect to see or hear. 

We put our real message, the real information we want another person to believe, in "subtext" not "text."  That's why "keywords" don't really work -- to say something important, you don't use the vocabulary of that subject.  If you use the vocabulary of that subject, then what you are saying will not be believed.  It's the text under the text (the body language, tone of voice, choice of off-topic vocabulary, allusions, associations) that carry the real information.  That tendency to use subtext (to talk with your hands, and blurt "you know" every few words) is the part of communication that a writer must emulate in dialogue but without the "you know" interjections.  (because "you know" you don't really know which is why I'm telling you, "you know?")   


That's why we phrase things we say in a special and different way for each person we talk to.  The "subtext" or "relationship" is different, so the wording must be different. 

Here are some of my posts mentioning subtext:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/12/flintstones-vs-lone-ranger.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/05/tv-show-white-collar-fanfic-and-show.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/08/what-exactly-is-editing-part-v.html

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

To maintain the illusion that your characters are real, you must take into account how they would talk differently to this character than to that character.  That variance is learned under the topic of "Characterization." 

Does this character talk to his boss differently than he talks to his father?  If yes, then he's one kind of character.  If no, then he's another. 

Dialogue is not two characters talking to each other -- it's the writer talking to the reader through these two hand-puppets called characters. 

The quality of the dialogue-writing is judged not on what the characters say to each other, but on how firmly the illusion is maintained that the writer does not exist, that the audience does not exist. 

In stagecraft, that's called the Fourth Wall.  It's the wall between the audience and the stage, the transparent wall we look through into this other world where the characters live, but that the characters see as a solid wall.

Break that illusion, and POOF - the rest of your illusions are gone.  All that worldbuilding and arduous suspension of disbelief POOF, GONE.

So how do you maintain this illusion that these characters are talking to each other, not the audience?  You use the set of techniques I've discussed in this blog as "Information Feed." 

Here are four posts specifically discussing this topic, but from other angles. 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/sexy-information-feed.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/10/heart-of-light-by-sarah-hoyt.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/11/information-feed-tricks-and-tips-for_23.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/12/information-feed-tricks-and-tips-for.html

And you need to employ all the tips and tricks from my posts on the Expository Lump.  You must never use Dialogue for either "Information Feed" or "Exposition" because that breaks the fourth-wall, the illusion that these characters are real people, the illusion that they're talking speech not dialogue. 

Here are some posts on Exposition:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/08/source-of-expository-lump.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/02/dissing-formula-novel.html

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/08/source-of-expository-lump-part-2.html

Check out Part 11 of my series on Astrology Just For Writers which was posted on November 1, 2011

Here are some of my previous posts mentioning Dialogue:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-tricks-of-scene-structure-part-2.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/dialogue-as-tool.html

Now, to the example that may illuminate all this for you, so you can practice this composition, this "Chopsticks" rendition.

Listen to a great writer (I'm not kidding, this is one terrific writer) play Chopsticks on his characters.

Here is Simon R. Green who has such complete mastery of all these techniques that he probably can't tell you how he does it. 

Here is a list of his more current  titles:

List of Simon R. Green titles

Here's a new series he's doing which uses such blatant "on the nose" dialogue in the most appropriately inappropriate places that you know it's done as broad comedy:



The opening chapter is a great example to learn from.

The characters are a field team of ghost hunters approaching a building and setting up their equipment. 

Green uses dialogue (which for these characters is workplace dialogue and should be "on the nose") to  give you all the worldbuilding exposition and feed you all sorts of information on the characters and their most recent adventures.  But he uses the "on the nose" dialogue to have the characters tell each other things the characters already know (a huge violation of all the rules of dialogue writing).

The genius in this piece is in the rhythm and pacing. 

Green has captured the very essence of the earliest science fiction style of awkward, blatant and even childish dialogue, and he's done it in such a way that you know he knows he's doing it to you on purpose.

He's playing with you, the reader, in a subtle way of buddies.  He telegraphs that he expects you to come into his world and play for a while, just for fun. 

Your Assignment, Should You Decide To Accept It  

Use the "Look Inside" feature on Amazon to get the first chapter (or download the Kindle sample). Or better yet, buy the book so you can finish reading the whole thing.  As soon as the characters finish with this building, they're off on yet another assignment that's even more dire.  So you can take this first chapter in isolation and work with it. 

REWRITE that first chapter, pulling all the dialogue off the nose, re-coding the exposition and information feed that's currently inside the dialogue into a combination of a) description, b) narrative c) internalized thoughts d) sensory impressions e) show-don't-tell imagery (you can add things and give the characters "business" with things) f) exposition.

Remember, the 4 kinds of text you find in fiction are:

a) dialogue
b) description
c) narrative
d) exposition

Ideally, each sentence or paragraph should be a smooth mixture of all of those.

Simon R. Green is one of the best writers working in this field today.  I couldn't have produced a piece this exemplary for you to practice on.  This will work for you as a dialogue "Chopsticks" composition to learn on only because it's so incredibly well done. 

This first chapter carefully avoids going "off the nose" even when it would have been easier. 

If you read his other books, (he has several dynamite series going) you'll see he does know how to do what you're just practicing here.   

It doesn't matter how good you already are at dialogue, you can benefit from this exercise.  I was doing this in my head as I read it, and laughing until my ribs hurt. 

Your assignment is to turn this archaic rhythm&pacing exercise into a much more "modern" sounding piece.  And if you can manage it, convert all the comedy into drama, or even horror, inject some Romance (not at all hard considering). 

Change the genre by shifting the dialogue off the nose.  Make up stuff about the characters, make them your own, just as you would if you were playing Chopsticks -- creating a unique rendition all your own just as you would if you were playing Chopsticks for the first time.

You know you have to throw away the result of this exercise -- don't plagiarize -- but play this Chopsticks composition.  Render it to the limits of your abilitiy, and you will grow. 

Just as if you were playing Chopsticks for the very first time, you really don't want anyone to hear or see you do this!  But the results will be visible in your writing forever. 

BTW: I just started reading another new Simon R. Green novel this one in his NIGHTSIDE series - gorgeously executed, solid storytelling, great work.   This is one writer worth studying carefully, on the whole, not just a few pages of one novel. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Targeting the Audience

I’m working on a fantasy romance novella centered around a computer role-playing game, and my first set of critiquer comments started me thinking about how we conceive of a book’s or story’s target audience. Specifically, what can we assume the audience knows prior to reading the piece of fiction? I don’t know much about computer RPGs myself. I play Dungeons and Dragons, tabletop version with dice, but my knowledge of fantasy video games comes from overhearing my husband playing them and listening to his discussions with our sons about games they’ve played. So I thought the terminology I included in the first draft of my story was the sort of thing almost anyone would be familiar with.

Specific example: “VR” for “virtual reality.” The hero and heroine are both computer geeks. In her POV, she naturally thinks “VR,” not the longer phrase. To my surprise, the commenter didn’t recognize this term. I’ve often been chided for over-explaining in my fiction, and I thought this was one point that didn’t need explanation.

In a case like this, can the writer figure that anybody who’d pick up a story whose action occurs mostly inside a computer game would already know such things? Or should an author always write for a general audience that needs explanations for anything non-mundane? Spelling everything out might annoy the target audience, but failing to spell out enough could lose potential casual readers who might otherwise enjoy the story. Nowadays, of course, nobody writes like the erudite authors of past centuries who often quoted long passages in foreign languages with no translations, on the assumption that their readers, being (of course) university-educated, wouldn’t need translations. On the other hand, explaining things most readers already know feels like talking down to them, as well as leading to unnecessary wordiness. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s Saint-Germain historical novels lean toward less explanation where background details are concerned. She uses period-accurate terms for clothing, etc., letting the reader infer what kind of garment is being described instead of defining it.

Yes, I know, when in doubt, we should work in bits of information in subtle ways that don’t disrupt the flow of the story. Still, is there a guiding principle on how much background one can reasonably expect of a reader? For instance, murder mysteries have different generic expectations from romance novels, and the author usually expects a reader who picks up a book in one genre or another to be at least somewhat familiar with the genre’s conventions and not balk at, say, a dead body in the library in a mystery or a “cute meet” in a romantic comedy. And I would have expected a habitual reader of fantasy to be familiar with the shade of meaning fans assign to the word “mundane” (another point that puzzled my commenter).

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Sizing Up The Competition Part 4 Futurology

 This is Part 4 of the series of posts titled Sizing Up The Competition.

Part 1 http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/11/sizing-up-competition-part-1-tigress.html
Part 2 http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/12/sizing-up-competition-part-2-winning.html
Part 3 http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/12/sizing-up-competition-part-3-romancing.html


Last week I ended off describing how I'd upgraded my household tech starting with my TV.

--------
I upgraded my household tech this year starting in January with my TV.  I got a Panasonic Viera and hardwired it to my router.  I got a Sony google-tv blu-ray player, and plugged the HD DVR from Cox into one HDMI plug of the TV and the SONY into another of the 3 HDMI plugs on the TV.  And I hardwired the Sony to my router separately from the TV.  So now my router has a wireless connected computer and 2 wired-connected computers on it plus a blu-ray google-tv device plus a Viera TV.  (Viera doesn't offer google TV - this is a hugely complex market but you need to understand it to solve our master puzzle subject here, raising the prestige of Romance genre among the general public.)


The Viera offers access to Netflix (as does the Sony) and some other things I don't use, but Viera's business model is to provide more kinds of online access with time -- I haven't seen any additions this year. 

----------------------
Here's part of what I learned before, during and after this upgrade, after which I upgraded my computer.

Each one of these accesses provided by Sony or Viera is a business deal, and online Web content providers are really reluctant to cut these deals.

Almost all the bizmodels of content providers doing business with Viera or Sony are "subscription based" -- like Netflix.  You need to make an account with a user and password, and use that to access your netflix account which then charges your credit card for whatever you get from netflix.

That's why I got both the Sony and the Viera access for my TV.  Nobody offers everything.

The Sony has google TV which uses a built in Chrome browser.  Other than that browser which cruises the internet, your only access is what they provide by contract. 

I can access Amazon Prime and all its streaming movies and TV shows, with the Viera TV (you do that by registering the TV's online ID number with amazon so their computer recognizes your logon.)  It seemed complicated to me. 

The google TV is the powerhouse device, the one you should watch carefully -- though for bizmodel reasons, google-TV is being out-competed at the moment, and not making enough money yet.

So I didn't think I needed a ROKU device or any of those headaches.  I'd already ached my head enough to understand that I can see on my TV a lot of what is available on the web but not everything unless I hook up a laptop to the TV (I got the cable to do that). 

GOOGLE internet access via the Sony blu-ray player hooked to the TV has certain commercial stations blacked out -- you can't use google search to get into the TV network URLs that provide access to proprietary TV shows they deliver on the web because those networks wouldn't do deals with google. I also had tech issues with the Sony blu-ray switching back and forth to Google Chrome.  It crashes and has to be rebooted. 

And as I mentioned above, Cox Cable has gotten into this web-delivery model to compete with Viera and Google TV. 

In other words, Cox sized up the competition in the way that the big publishers have not (yet). At the moment, Cox Cable has an "app" for the iPad that lets you access a small handful of stations on the iPad, but only when it's on your home internet connection.  It doesn't work on the iPhone or iPod. 

So when Beck offered 2 weeks free to test out his new network, gbtv.com, I fired up my Sony and googled up gbtv.com and to my surprise I was able to WATCH A REAL-TIME WEBCAST!!!  (nevermind what antics he was up to!  It's irrelevant.  It's the fiction delivery system that's being remade here.)

I should post here an iPod photo of me with my jaw on my belt-buckle but I was too stunned to make one. 

Since Beck was selling the Roku headache, I really didn't expect the Google-TV connection to work, just the way Google tv users can't get at the USA network TV shows online. 

But it did work.   The webcast is HD, but doesn't fill my 42" screen side to side -- it's a squarish patch in the middle like the non-HD channels.  It's good color, movements don't blur, the picture is in every way acceptable though the sound is a bit dimmer than the cable sound.  But the TV's sound tuner was able to bring the sound up to comfort levels.

The picture didn't jump and lag as streaming often does.  He's carrying some commercials already, and will probably add more with time.  The really big bucks he invested was in that smooth-HD picture delivery, and he has a couple of cameras and a very competent crew, but in the first week they had a number of snafus and gliches like microphones and teleprompters coming unplugged.  The set he had built also cost more than the one he had on Fox, but that's a one-time investment he'll monetize. 

My best information at the moment indicates it cost him about 25 million to launch this venture, but within the first week he was out-drawing Oprah.  Yeah, Glenn Beck bigger than Oprah.  Think about that very hard because Oprah's audience is far closer to the typical Romance readership than Glenn's.  Oprah's stuck on cable, Glenn isn't.  Where did that marketing consultant (read the previous parts of this series) say his contemporaries are?  The web, not cable TV. 

Can you write a Romance novel using ONE set?  3 or 4 characters, 1 set, webisodes.  That's the toe in the door our project to elevate the perception of Romance needs. 

So I'm warning you, get yourself some sort of hookup of your TV to your internet, unless of course you really prefer your computer screen or tablet screen.  Another alternative is to get a really big computer monitor and hook that up to TV (lots of people doing that). 

Oh, and with both the Viera and the Sony I can access YouTube directly.  Do you see the POTENTIAL for Romance writers? Do you remember the coffee commercials that told a little story about neighbors borrowing coffee, getting to know each other?  Study the delivery system evolution carefully. 

Beck has gbtv.com rigged to deliver to iPods, iPhones, and iPads -- I downloaded the app for my iPod and it works just fine to bring up an episode of the Beck show (don't try to sit through the whole thing).  Do you see the potential? 

I think he'll expand the delivery modes and methods as budget allows -- he's going for the big time here, and I suspect he can become bigger than he ever was on Fox, considering how shrewd a businessman he is (again, nevermind WHAT he says, watch what he does.)

But BIG is no longer the bizmodel.  CUSTOMIZED is, just like Toffler predicted. 

Beck is customizing his product for a very specific, narrowly defined audience and pleasing that audience beyond their wildest expectations.  It's the narrowness of his focus that causes that intense pleasure.

His audience is not our audience (mostly, anyway).  But that doesn't matter.  If he gets people to hook up their TV's to the internet, he's giving us all the other members of that household, isn't he?

I'm telling you, watch what this guy is doing!  Pay attention to how he frames his message to his audience, figure out the business model and watch it morph over the next year.

Compare that, if you can find the time, to what Oprah is doing and how well she's succeeding at it.

Now, go back and check the beginning of Part 1 in this series on Sizing Up The Competition and tell me if I made my point.  Do you understand what I'm talking about and why I'm talking about it on a blog about writing craft techniques?

Can you now write an essay on what studying Glenn Beck's business model has to do with succeeding in the future of the Romance field, all aside from the concept that if you study his content you'll have plenty of firey inspiration for rich, deep, complex themes.  That inspiration would be useful only if you're not too tongue-tied by what he says to articulate the components of those themes. 

Another attribute of Beck's impact on his audience is the way he slices and dices a subject.  He admits he's trying to make the bits and pieces digestible for his audience.  I seriously doubt that's his own work.  He's got someone working for him who creates these essays or monologues.  That person's thinking style (not conclusions) is the key discipline behind creating novels with complex themes so deep that the reader doesn't know the novel even has a theme. 

Deep and rich thematic material is already native to your thinking.  But there's a writing craft trick to taking your own rich thinking apart into its components, then restructuring the ideas so you can hang a story on them without the skeleton showing.  We'll get at more of that next year. 

And don't forget to sign up for notification of what the twitter founders are doing. 
http://lift.do/   

And I'm assuming you've investigated http://fora.tv/  and know all you want to know about Apple TV.  I've heard Apple will be coming out with an internet-ready TV set, no device to attach.  At this time, people use these things mostly to access movies (or old TV shows) on Amazon or Netflix which are Apple-TV's competition.  Again, each of these sources owns proprietary rights in certain products (movies, TV shows, originals).  Beck is producing his own original stuff you can't get anywhere else.  (News shows, kids shows, comedy shows, Features, new originals by subscription only). 

Netflix reported a larger drop in DVD-only subscribers than they had expected after raising prices steeply this year.  They're after the "streaming" customers, but aren't really getting the growth they expected.  They are on Viera and Google TV and Roku.

The bottleneck as demonstrated by comments on Beck's trying to sell Roku devices to his audience, is the technology. 

The slim percentage of tech-savvy won't stand for being locked away from the functionality they desire.

They hack their cell phones to get the kind of device they want onto the network they want to subcribe to. 

Here's a YouTube video of how to hack the current Apple TV (a device like Roku that you attach to your TV; you can buy the device on Amazon for about $100, but like cell phones and Google TV, it comes with "blocks" that keep you away from some information streams) in order to get to your Hulu streaming TV show account. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSSAxEYaGJQ 
You do subscribe to Hulu.com, don't you?  There's a free level and a Plus, or fee based level of Hulu subscription. 

Hulu links with the Roku device -- so you can indeed get to your Hulu que via Roku and watch your shows on your TV without cable or satellite subscription.  But, you see, the Roku/Hulu connection is a "deal" they make behind the scenes, and in order to get Hulu on Roku, you have to subscribe to Hulu Plus, which costs a continuing fee. 

Here's a page where you can see all the devices that can connect you to Hulu, including Apple.

http://www.hulu.com/plus/devices?src=homepage-roku

But it doesn't include my Viera Panasonic TV or my Sony/Google-TV.

This is so reminiscent of the beginnings of AOL when it was a dial-up service with local numbers everywhere, but once you got online, all you could access was items AOL itself provided to you, not the whole internet that was outside AOL's sandbox.  

Now, remember the question we started with, a deep, far-reaching philosophical question that can generate limitless numbers of rich, complex themes to hang a Romance on:

It can be argued that the whole animal kingdom is at war, and it's all based on sexuality.  OK, it's a stretch to blame microbe-wars on sexuality since they don't have any, but still they eat each other.

The thesis is that violence is inherent in primate nature.  Violence is necessary to ensure that the strongest among us mate and proliferate the most. 

Is this format/contract game of keep-away and the violent fighting back (hacking your this to make it do that) an example of human sexuality properly expressing itself in competition to the point of annihilation of another group's (corporation's) physical resources so its own progeny will survive and proliferate?

Wars, throughout primate history, have centered on resources such as water, food, forests, then minerals like copper, iron, tin, finally oil.  Is information the next resource to trigger wars?

Have you been following the Middle East conflicts at all?  Do you know that the Israeli/Palestinian border conflict over the "West Bank" is about water aquifers?  If the Palestinians win, Israel hasn't enough water to support it's population and they die or leave.  If the Israelis win, Israel has the water and the Palestinians don't.  If they try to co-exist in the same area, they end up killing each other.  Is that human nature that can't be changed, or a problem to be solved by Love (as in Love Conquers All)?

"Water" is a wonderful symbol for "fiction" or "entertainment."  Or even for "information."

"Water" is a symbol for emotion, and fiction or entertainment both deliver an emotional charge.  Laughter is often proved to be "the best medicine" -- and it's an entertainment commodity. 

"Information" is also a "water" symbol because getting information produces the satisfaction of curiosity, an emotion. 

So these "proprietary devices" which limit your access to this or that stream of fiction, entertainment, or information, are an opening gambit in hostilities against the consumer -- and the answer is to hack the device and make it deliver what you want from it.  The counterstrike will be more hack-proof devices, or escalating legal penalties -- or some hostile regulation that requires companies to give away their product instead of getting paid for it.

It's "White Collar" violence (like the TV Show White Collar instead of, for example, the TV show Alphas or Burn Notice) but it's definitely a violence of a kind, a sublimated violence.

The Business World and the world of Games reflect each other.  People say business is based on Football, but I wonder if Business and Football are both rooted in that zero-sum-game competition for water, food, forests, etc:  the competition for the means for survival of me, mine, and my progeny. 

The Romance writer knows the power of raw, violent sex scenes.  There is something very primal there.  But is that primate-primal or Human-Love-Primal?  Or is one dependent on the other?

Questions like that lead to "rich, deep, thematic structures" as you apply "show don't tell" to them.

According to that marketing guru's consultant I pointed you to earlier in this Sizing Up The Competition series, the internet and the Web have significantly changed how younger people assess the threat of another person - how they size up the competition.

At the same time, there's been a cognitive shift away from using the mental shortcuts our ancestors always relied on to identify another human as a threat - race, color, village of origin, or just plain stranger.  That's a survival shortcut, kill first ask questions later.

You, as a Romance writer in SFR or PNR or any sub-genre, must write for the children of the current twenty-somethings, using that rapidly changing method of sizing up the competition, of identifying and nullifying threats.

To understand them better than they understand themselves, you need to experience their interface with the technological platform on which they are building tools to assess or nullify threats.

That's why I'm talking about Roku and Hulu and Amazon Prime and Apple TV and Netflix and this next venture by the founders of twitter  lift.do 

These ventures and a half a dozen others I've encountered (maybe more than that) are all duking it out for the direct channel to you, the potential subscriber. 

One of them will be willing to carry a dramatic product of yours (a story in pictures, video, screenplay) to their subscribers. 

But so far none of them reach "everybody" - not even Facebook!  People get leery and shy away.

So we look at this field and we see "competition" to the level of escalating white-collar violence.  But are we really seeing something else?  Is this actually not competition at all but rather Customization of the sort Alvin Toffler described in his non-fiction book Future Shock?

Is it delivery-systems competing for audiences?  Or is it audiences competing for delivery systems?

Are audiences competing against each other for the scarce resource of fiction-delivery or information-delivery? 

That gbtv.com thing I talked about delivers video of Glenn Beck sitting before a big microphone doing his RADIO show. Lots of "radio" shows these days do a video posted to the web which consists of the talk show host talking into a (super-huge) microphone.  You even see such "radio" on TV, (Imus In The Morning for example). 

Why is Beck joining these people, web/podcasting an image of himself (and others in the room) doing a radio broadcast, webcast?   

Well, it's drawing an audience WATCHING him talk on the radio.

Why?  Whywhywhy?  Is it his content? 

It doesn't seem so to me because I've recently seen a big increase in the number of podcasts and videos of exactly this same format of radio show on a huge variety of subjects including talk shows about books.

Here's one source created by a friend of mine, Lillian Caldwell:
    http://www.internetvoicesradio.com 

That's a web-radio station she started but it's undergone a number of name and URL changes, tech upgrades, proliferation of shows MC'd by different people, and an ever growing number of "hits" or downloads or life streaming listeners.  The focus is on talk about books, author interviews, and listener interactions. 

Currently, the statistics stand like this:

Total listener base is 760,000.  Up 200,000 since 2010.  The station receives 34,000 downloads per day.  196 countries listen to the station on a daily basis.  Youngest listener is 13.  Oldest listener is 97. 

And it delivers a quality product much appreciated by the listeners, creating growing fame.  The radio station was invited by the 2011 International Miami Book Festival in late November to do remote streaming  & interviewing of their authors, publishers, & agents, and other activities going on.  PWRTALK (or Power Talk -- one of the newest names of this endeavor) is the only Internet talk radio station invited.

Passionate World Radio, Inc.  is another way this same endeavor is known.  That name changing happens because as it grows, it needs more succinct URLs and references.  The work Lillian Caldwell has been doing has been gaining prestige. 

Lillian was in Miami November 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, & 21st.  for the Festival, and they also invited her to participate with the delegation from China, take part in their Comic & Graphic Novel Section, and with their youth group.  She's took an intern to work with her crew which includes a videographer plus one other host from Washington, DC to help interview.  Plans included an interview with Al  Gore as well.

If you have a published book and would want to be interviewed on this web-radio station, email     LSaraCauldwell@gmail.com

Somehow radio - especially via the web now - has burgeoned, and the most popular shows are talk-shows, information shows, discussion and opinion shows that consist not of actors telling a story but of a few people sitting before over-sized microphones doing a words-only presentation. 

What do the people doing discussion table video podcasts know that we don't know? 

They are usually start-up entrepreneurs -- not well funded like Beck -- who enter the fray of massive competition and painstakingly gather an audience, customizing their product to the audience rather than trying to be all things to all people.

But they compete for audience-share, for advertising revenue, and try to create a viable business in a field that's changing as fast as the 20-somethings become replaced by the former teens. 

Study this roiling turmoil of shifting delivery system channels carefully.  Study the multimillion dollar start-ups and the $200 start-ups.  Study the few-thousand-dollar a year operations.

As the marketer's consultant pointed out, young people are assessing threats in new ways, using new tools, drawing new conclusions.

Many of these twenty-somethings don't own a television set, a landline telephone, or cable or satellite service and have no ambition to ever do so.  The significance of that has not been adequately assessed by the traditional publishers. 
 
I suggest you assess it.

"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer."

If you're the canary, you stalk that tiger. 

Wellll -- so I talked myself into it writing this and bought a Roku.  It displays the Beck show FULL SCREEN on my HD TV.  Full screen, not a patch in the middle of the screen.  It also has a few channels of offerings the other services don't have.  It has a channel that offers low-budget amateur films, Vimeo, which doesn't require another subscription as Beck's GBTV.COM does.  Vimeo may be on the other services too, but I didn't notice it.  It has a classical opera/symphony channel.  You just buy the Roku ($50-$100).  You don't pay a subscription to use the Roku, but still Netflix and the others all require a subscription which you sign up for and activate on your computer, then go to your TV and enter a code into the Roku connection. 

The competition in this biz is cut-throat and ferocious - more tiger than canary.  Very hungry tiger.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Announcing the SFR Holiday Blitz Winners

Congratulations to the winners of the great reads offered on this (alien romances) blog. They are, in no particular order:
Anna

Peta

Andrea

Ayla

Winners, if your profile does not link to an email address (Peta, Ayla) please post a comment marked PRIVATE and write in your email address. All comments on this blog are moderated and your address will not show up.

Thank you to everyone who entered, and good luck with the other contests in the SFR Holiday event.