Human Races

In a book I just read called NORMANS AND SAXONS: SOUTHERN RACE MYTHOLOGY AND THE INTELLECTUAL HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR, by Ritchie Devon Watson, Jr. (Louisiana State University Press), I encountered some fascinating facts new to me. The author documents by numerous quotations that Southerners in the nineteenth century thought of themselves as “Cavaliers” opposed to the Northern “Puritans.” Moreover, they conceived this division as ethnic rather than merely cultural; Southern Cavaliers descended from noble, chivalrous Normans (conveniently disregarding all the Scots, Irish, and other nationalities that settled below the Mason-Dixon line and ignoring the millions of non-aristocratic farmers and laborers who constituted the majority of the population). Northern Puritans, they maintained, descended from churlish Saxons. (Many Northern writers accepted this distinction but, of course, exalted Puritan values.) To the “aristocratic” Southerners, the Northern “race,” being motivated by self-righteous fanaticism and (incongruously, it seems) mercenary greed, were dishonorable cowards determined to impose tyranny on the unoffending South.

I learned that the term “race” as now used originated in the nineteenth century, that many ethnic groups (as we would now classify them) were considered separate races, and that racial characteristics were believed to include all sorts of mental and moral traits. Southerners believed themselves innately superior not only to the black race but to the mongrelized, barbarian hordes of the North. Oddly, the South’s admiration for Sir Walter Scott’s IVANHOE resulted in emulation of, not the Saxons, the heroes of the novel, but the Normans, the story’s villains. As for “all men are created equal,” that was a dangerous notion Jefferson had picked up from those radical Frenchmen.

My first reaction to this historical phenomenon was astonishment: I’ve always known my Virginia ancestors embraced beliefs that only white supremacist fringe groups would admit to nowadays. But I’d never suspected my forebears were actually NUTS. :) Further thoughts: NORMANS AND SAXONS helped me understand GONE WITH THE WIND on a new level, as well as the classic silent film BIRTH OF A NATION. (Catch it on Turner Classic Movies sometime and reflect on the boggling fact that many people literally viewed the KKK as noble knights defending their homeland and the purity of their ladies.) Most intriguing to me is the concept of polygenism, the theory that the various races of humanity had originated separately and had always been essentially different subspecies or even different species. This idea dominated anthropology in the middle of the nineteenth century, directly opposed to the previously accepted belief in monogenism, that all human races sprang from one origin, with racial differences caused by environment. Since the Bible portrays humanity as being descended from a single pair of ancestors, polygenism was the avant-garde, iconoclastic, progressive scientific theory of the day.

Now, I can understand how someone could credibly argue this hypothesis with reference to groups that look very different. An extraterrestrial anthropologist might at first glance, prior to DNA testing, mistake Scandinavians and Australian aborigines for different species. But Normans and Saxons, for heaven’s sake? The idea reminds me of the STAR TREK episode about the two implacable enemies trapped in a hereditary racial war because one is black on the left side and the other is black on the right side. The theory of polygenism sparks lots of potential SF premises, though. Suppose Neanderthals survived hidden among us. (Philip Jose Farmer wrote a short story on that topic.) What about the “hobbit” people whose remains were discovered on a Pacific island, apparently a previously unknown human group in which normal adults were no bigger than small children? If Yeti or Sasquatch exist, they might be another intelligent humanoid species. Some modern anthropologists, although in the minority, champion the multiregional hypothesis of human evolution. In this system, Homo sapiens developed independently in various locations after our pre-human ancestors migrated from their African point of origin. The currently dominant theory, on the other hand, holds that all surviving human groups descended from a single population in Africa. Wikipedia has a short article on “Polygenism” and a fairly comprehensive one on “Multiregional origin of modern humans.”

I wrote a paper exploring the version of polygenism represented by the lycanthropic, vampiric “witch folk” of Jack Williamson’s DARKER THAN YOU THINK. You can find it archived here in issue 4 of the JOURNAL OF DRACULA STUDIES:

http://www.blooferland.com/drc/index.php?title=Journal_of_Dracula_Studies

Shifting P.O.V.

Shifting Point Of View
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Here is a succinct, graphic, iconic way to depict what Lovers fight about, sometimes break up over, and occasionally become enemies about.  It depicts the reason that "The Far Left" reviles "The Far Right."  It's all in the Point of View, and that different vantage point is what creates the best dramatic Conflict, the Essence of Story.  Think hard about this graphic.

On a Yahoo Group zinelist where fanfic writers who are as good as professionals discuss fanfic, the topic of fanfic preference for single POV (Point of View) came up.

I learned to spot POV in narrative when I was in High School and read in a Writer's Digest that the POV in a story is what you would see through a camera set on the shoulder of the POV character. The POV character might not be the main character, the hero, or the character whose story is being told. The POV character can be a "Watson" -- a chronicle writer, a journalist traveling with, a Bard dogging the footsteps of King-to-be Arthur.

But knowing the definition of P.O.V., seeing it done by others in narrative, is not the same thing as writing it yourself.

I struggled with POV as a beginning writer and still focus on it as a professional SF/F reviewer for an on-paper magazine.

Choosing the wrong POV for a story, or shifting POV during a story can kill reader (and reviewer) interest.

I've been teaching writing craft since I was writing my Kraith Series of Star Trek fanfic, a series which had 50 creators working their own notions in my sub-universe under my editing.

Kraith is now available online FREE
http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/
with other classic trek zines. (and we're open to posting more classics). Kraith won the Memory Alpha Award.

I went on to launch my professional SF novels, the Sime~Gen novels, then several other SF universes (one of which, DUSHAU, won the first Romantic Times Award for SF (so long ago the award isn't posted on their website!)) and now may be revived as webisodes in full color images.

Some writers who have studied the POV issue closely may have missed one key (very invisible) element in a good POV shift that I had to discover for myself.

The issue is not whether you shift POV or not.

The issue is when and why and how you shift POV.

Shifting POV is an art, but also a craft. And it is very difficult to pull it off correctly, or even to define what "correctly" is.

As you read this, please remember Art always trumps Craft in POV shifting. But without Craft there can be no artistic statement. Art requires discipline, and it is the discipline that makes the Art shine forth.

So there are a few craft rules, which if violated ruin both the fine-art aspect of the narrative and the commercial art aspect.

So when you violate a craft rule, (note, I said when not if -- as with all writing, POV rules are there to be violated) as an artist, you must telegraph that you know the rule, that you know why it became a rule, what your readership gets out of your obeying that rule, and that this violation intensifies or delineates an artistic point, and that it will be worth it to the reader by the final line of the story. (i.e. suspense).

For the most part, it is best to use such rule-violation technique with an audience you have established and wooed into trusting you. Your violation of the rule should come as a shock and a frisson of alertness to your reader. "She never writes like THIS! What's going on here?"

And it should come across as your promise to your jaded readers that you know what they generally get out of your stories, and that you will deliver that charge despite the rule violation -- or because of it.

Now, how in the world can a writer accomplish all that with a rule violation? And how can a writer know they have accomplished it, not just lost their base readership?

The answer lies in craftsmanship. Seasoned craftsmanship.

The reason single POV is absolutely, beyond question, the best choice for a beginning writer is that it takes years and millions of words to learn to manage a single POV.

You can't (really can't) manage the discipline for two POVs simultaneously if you can't manage just one by itself. It's a strength, like the strength of a muscle.

You can't lift 100 pounds if you've never lifted 50, or if you managed it only once then dropped the weight.

The reason many novels get published professionally where the POV shifts are not done correctly (blending Art and Craft smoothly = correctly) is that many editors don't have the education to know what they're buying -- and today, a lot of novels are bought by committee, not individual editors. The editor you submit to may be the only one who reads the whole book, then describes it to the committee -- who wouldn't know a POV shift if you put it before them.

Readers, however, still respond subconsciously to the Art and the Craft of the POV shift the same way they always have -- with some added sophistication because of the influence of TV shows.

A badly crafted POV shift will flip a reader right out of the story. They'll put it aside and not come back. Ask them why, and they say "Well, it got boring." or "I lost interest." or "I forgot what the story was about."

Readers don't know where their emotional responses to the character and story are coming from. And it's better for the writer if they don't. Better yet if the editor doesn't know where his/her emotional responses are coming from.

Writers must know -- at least subconsciously -- where their emotional power comes from in the story. It's structure. It's all structure.

A good novel, or movie, can be graphed for emotional pitch and volume. The name of the composition (novel, short story, movie, TV episode) tells you exactly where the peaks and valleys of emotional pitch and volume must fall throughout the work -- by percentage of the way through, by page number. Exactly.

Any writer can produce a work which has originally placed peaks and valleys of emotional pitch dictated by their personal sense of art -- but that work won't be a "novel" or a "feature film" or a "short story." Thus, it won't be "marketable" by the current marketing mechanism.

The name of the kind of work it is dictates the placement of peaks and valleys of emotional pitch -- and thus by derivation, of where the POV shifts may be, and how they can be structured.

Violate any of those unwritten (and un-taught in classes) rules, and your work will not become a marketing success even if you can get it mass market published.

Robert A. Heinlein, quoting an old adage of stagecraft wrote the motto of our WorldCrafters online school of professional writing (at http://www.simegen.com ) -- "Sounding spontaneous is a matter of careful preparation." And from Alma Hill, "Writing is a Performing Art."

And that's the secret behind POV shifting and not losing your readers attention. CAREFUL PREPARATION. It's all stagecraft, a performing art.

The seeds of the shift are planted 10's of pages before the event -- the upcoming shift is telegraphed clearly, but not blatantly.

ARTISTIC RULES:

1) Use single POV unless forced out of it by the THEME, the underlying art.

2) When you introduce a second POV, (or go to Omniscient Narrator) you blow your suspense line to smithereens, and totally change the reader's mood and engagement with the material. If that's the artistic effect you need -- to break the reader's concentration and building emotional involvement -- then you must shift POV because nothing is as effective at loosening a reader's hold on the material than a POV shift. But you must be "strong" enough, disciplined enough, in enough control of the material to redirect the reader's attention smoothly right at a peak of emotional tension where you have precisely foreshadowed what will happen next.

3) In preparation for a POV shift, plant the questions answered from the other POV, and make the reader pant to learn this information. Take two or three chapters if necessary to foreshadow the new POV. Plant the thematic and most especially the visual clues, the symbolism that works on the unconscious, way before the new POV.

CRAFT POV RULES:

1) Never shift POV because you don't know any other way to show the reader some information. Instead, learn the information feed techniques.

2) Never shift POV by accident.

3) Always know exactly what the entire story looks like from ALL the characters' POV's and what they're thinking, feeling, planning, hoping, dreaming.

4) Never shift POV to let the reader know what another character is thinking.

5) Craft the POV transition with the same care you use crafting a time-shift ("Let's go get pizza!" *** The pizzeria was hot and steamy.) or a flashback shift back and forward (another really complex set of operations).

6) At the outlining stage of your story, when you cast your vision of the beginning, middle and end plus the theme and conflict of the story, DIVIDE (or as they say in Mathematics, "factor") those monolithic elements into philosophical fragments that ADD UP TO the story you're telling, and assign each factor to a POV. (that's how Gene Roddenberry created the original Star Trek ensemble cast, factoring the underlying theme. Or so he told us.)

7) Never shift POV in a story under 30,000 words or so, preferably only in a story that's at least 50,000 words. It's too jarring to the reader and there isn't enough space to smooth the transitions. That's why romance novels tend to be longer than action novels.

That all sounds very cold, calculating and distant, maybe more work than fun, and fanfic writers write for FUN above all.

So not all writers do all these operations at the same stage of production.

Craft Step 6 above may be done on the 4th or 5th rewrite. For an example of me doing that, see my first Award Winner, Unto Zeor, Forever. It is in Hardcover & paperback. An early draft of it called SIME SURGEON is posted online for free reading, so students can see how that sort of rewriting process works, step by step.
http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/surgeon/SURGEON1.html Compare with the published, award winning novel, and see how the POV is tightened and the theme sharpened.

So, the trick to POV shifts that don't leave the reader bored is the same as the trick that lets a writer include information in a flashback. As you move over the transition point between time or character, you must KEEP THE PLOT MOVING FORWARD.

That forward motion is accomplished by the foreshadowing and planting of thematic questions and symbolism long, LONG before the first POV shift -- by ensuring that the reader is anticipating what will happen to the character you're leaving as soon as you return to that character's POV -- and by ensuring that the reader is ready to leap into the new POV and the whole new STORY that comes with it, trusting you to take care of the character they already learned to love.

The more information you allow your reader to have, the harder you have to work planting the questions that produce suspense that will ultimate break explosively at the climactic moment where the conflict is resolved.

When you have two POV's, you have to craft the story's ultimate climax so that both POV-stories resolve in the same incident.

Marion Zimmer Bradley worked for over 20 years struggling to craft that moment for CATCHTRAP. One of the peak highs of my life was when I provided the comment that gave her the key to creating that moment. Publication of Catchtrap opened the door to publication of Mists of Avalon which became a TV Miniseries and a long series of long best selling novels. Crafting that final moment where two stories climax in one event is the secret of that kind of success. It's worth 20 years of hard work.

In a Romance it is customary to use 2 points of view, the two people who are falling for each other.

The first chapter opens in the POV of the person whose story the envelope plot is telling.

The second chapter opens in the POV of the secondary character who is the complication to the main plot. Or who might be a main plot of his/her own.

The questions that generate suspense in a Romance arise from the very POV shift itself, each understanding the other's behavior to be generated by different motives than the reader sees.

By introducing POV's in that order in that way, you telegraph to the reader that these two people are in conflict over a Romantic spark or involvement or misunderstanding. You also telegraph that you know what you're doing, that you understand the form of the Romance novel, that you will deliver what the reader wants.

Another way to work POV is to use Arthur Conan Doyle's motif of the objective narrator who watches events unfold, and is usually only peripherally involved.

I loved it on Sanctuary (the Sci-Fi Channel TV show) where they had Watson and Jack The Ripper faced off against each other in modern times. And Watson was the one who had actually been The Detective, not Holmes.

Writing a multi-POV story requires writing several single POV stories simultaneously, thus the rule 7 above, that it takes more space to construct a story with POV shifts. The single story has to be factored into 2 stories, each with plot, theme, and conflict, all derived from a single unifying theme .

For all those stories to be in the same volume, with events interwoven, the single stories must share a single thematic set. (Otherwise the reader gets confused, disinterested, or remains unsatisfied by the ending.)

I've discussed thematic structure in:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-you-can-do-in-novel-that-you-cant.html

That post has a discussion of the lengths of novels by theme structure and how to achieve that.

A discussion of the Art of theme construction is at:

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

Our current plan at WorldCrafters Guild is to post PDF files edited from these long blog posts to put related subjects together for easier study. You will be able to download those volumes in PDF, and maybe HTML and .lit formats.

You can follow me on twitter as JLichtenberg -- or on LinkedIn or Facebook -- to get notice of when those books get posted.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/
http://www.slantedconcept.com

Kudos, history and ethics

Margaret L Carter's blog got me thinking...

How different would history be --or would it?-- if kudos for some discovery or victory went to someone else?

It wasn't Gallileo but an Englishman, Herriott who first mapped the moon with the help of a telescope.

http://news.aol.com/article/old-moon-map-corrects-history/307394

Suppose it was Admiral Lord De Saumarez who was responsible for the English fleet's great naval victories at Cadiz and on the Nile, rather than the high-profile maverick, Horatio Nelson?

What if the foresight and preparedness of Admiral Themistocles was more decisive in repelling Xerxes' invasion of Greece that were the delays and losses sustained at Thermopylae thanks to King Leonidas and his Spartans?

To pick up from Margaret's point, does it matter who built the railroad?

I suppose we've all been in situations where an upstart repeated someone else's idea but spoke more loudly, and got the credit for it. There was even a Fed-Ex advertisement on that theme!

Then, there's the tradition that it is usually the victor of any war who writes the history, prosecutes the perpetrators of war crimes, and makes the movies.

Does it matter in the long term?

How about the difference between historical injustice, and fiction?

Should a made-up character give one of the most famous political speeches in a nation's history, for instance?

Would this be acceptable if the made-up character was portrayed as the real historical character's double, standing in? Or a time traveler? Or a shape-shifting alien?

Suppose the alternate history's speech-giver was another real historical figure? (But not the person that history tells us gave the speech.)

Where does playing with history become offensive and irresponsible?
When should the facts get in the way of a good story?

Is it acceptable to "rip" alternative history from the headlines of one of the more colorful supermarket tabloids? (I assume that some of their news is made up!)

So many questions with which to wrestle!

Rowena Cherry

By the way, Knight's Fork is a featured review at UpTheStairCase.org
http://www.upthestaircase.org/cherry.htm

SIDEWAYS IN CRIME

I recommend an anthology I’m reading called SIDEWAYS IN CRIME, edited by Lou Anders, based on the theme of combining mystery with alternate history. The stories range from wildly counterfactual settings such as 1914 in England of a world where the Roman Empire never fell and Mexico in a world where the Aztec Empire continued to flourish in an America dominated by China and Spain, to a recent-past scenario in which J. Edgar Hoover is murdered during the Johnson administration and Attorney General Robert Kennedy rushes to take possession of Hoover’s potentially explosive secret files. I actually bought the book for “A Murder in Eddsford,” by S. M. Stirling, set in his Change universe (which began with DIES THE FIRE), where all advanced technology ceased to function in the late twentieth century (making it more post-apocalyptic than alternate history; maybe it could be called “alternate near-future”).

Alternate history scenarios inspire speculation as to whether history as we know it is so delicately balanced that the killing of a butterfly, as in the classic Ray Bradbury story, would tip events so far as to alter the long-term course of the world, or so resilient as to be self-correcting to the extent that any attempted change would result in merely reaching the same point by a different route. And then there’s the “great man” philosophy: Would the early death of Napoleon or Hitler have transformed the future of Europe, or does history conform more to the pattern Heinlein expressed as, “When it’s time to railroad, somebody will railroad”? Parallel universes come to mind, too; in Heinlein’s NUMBER OF THE BEAST, every possible sequence of events that could ever occur, including those laid out in works of fiction, HAS occurred in one of the unimaginably vast number of universes that exist. Any attempt to change history simply creates a new parallel timeline.

Collateral Repairs

You've heard of collateral damage. Now let's consider collateral repairs.

The phrase "collateral repair" has been used in other ways, but I want to propose a writer's jargon application of the term which dovetails with Blake Snyder's explanation of screenplay structure.

Collateral repairing would be some sort of healing, fixing, anti-damage side-effect that an action might have as an unexpected consequence or side-effect, not the goal of the action.

When you are focused on goal-directed behavior (like a hero in a story solving a problem), you move through the world on automatic pilot, doing everything else without thinking, by habit, by knee-jerk reflex.

That means that most of what you do when acting in a goal directed fashion reveals your essential character, who you really are rather than who you want the world to think you are.

Your actions reveal who you actually are because they aren't deliberate, well thought out, not intended to have specific long term consequences in your life or any one's.

Your actions in pursuit of a goal with long term consequences may head you into trouble, into a learning and growing experience, a "story." But your negligent, habitual actions show (without telling) what lessons of life you think you've already mastered.

Writers can use this widespread human trait in sketching a character in conjunction with the Window Character Linnea Sinclair told us about in her post at
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/windows-to-soul.html
where she reported on Writer's Boot Camp with Todd Stone.

The cleanest example of Collateral Repairs that I can think of is a scene in a Superman movie where Clark Kent is going to work at the Daily Planet, walks down the street amid a series of slapstick comedy mishaps and deals with them using his powers subtly while pretending to be the clueless clutzy reporter.

Now, true, in that scene, Clark knows he's helping people, and deliberately hiding his powers. He knows he's on Earth to help people. But his "goal" is to get to work, to remain in character as Clark. All his actions as he walks down the street are just aside from his progress toward his goal, and in some cases endanger achieving that goal. The people he helps are not part of the main plot.

So we see the Hero beneath the outward seeming. Clark Kent can't just waltz by humans, ignoring what's happening to them, and he can't just ignore the results of his own casual actions. My point is that Clark sees a problem that isn't his own and that isn't on his agenda today, and he reaches out to help. He doesn't ponder, deliberate, calculate, or negotiate a reward - he just DOES what comes naturally to him. And thus we get to know the real Clark Kent, maybe better than he knows himself.

Blake Snyder (http://www.blakesnyder.com ) calls the technique of characterizing by collateral repairs SAVE THE CAT! You can find links and explanations on Snyder's website.

The opening pages of a script set up the characters and the problem, the overall situation. Snyder calls that "laying pipe" -- laying the channel through which the reader will be drawn into the story.

The most essential element in sucking a reader into a story is the characters.

So Blake says the character you want sympathy for has to "save the cat" -- do an act which may be irrelevant (or even counter-productive) to the plot, but that displays the inner nature of the character. The particular trait displayed has to be relevant to the climax of the story and has some thematic link to the B story.

Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden character is a solid case in point.


I was sent a review copy of a RoC trade paperback which Amazon is promoting titled MEAN STREETS. It's an anthology of 4 novellas about currently famous action characters.

The lead story, "The Warrior" is by one of my favorite authors, Jim Butcher, and extends the story of his TV Series/ Novel private eye character Harry Dresden, Wizard.

In 2007, I reviewed Butcher's Dresden novels in my book review column, and did one column where I interviewed Butcher in person.
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2007/rrbooks2007info.html

Butcher's Harry Dresden novels are long, complex, multi-threaded plots where Harry Dresden has three or more life-threatening cases or affairs in progress at once, and usually emerges beaten, bedraggled, bloody and alive. Harry doesn't exult over his vanquished enemies.

So it must have been a real writing challenge for Butcher to produce a novella sized Dresden story with one plot thread and one single point to make. After the discipline of working with the Harry Dresden TV series (on Sci Fi channel but now on DVD (I have the DVDs and have really enjoyed them)

Butcher probably had a better idea of how to write a complete Dresden story at novella length. "The Warrior" succeeds marvelously at this length and is very like a TV episode. I recommend you read that novella before reading my analysis. There are some spoilers in this discussion because the COLLATERAL REPAIRS part comes at the end of this Dresden story.

See my blog post on spoilers -- it is my stance that no really good story can be spoiled by knowing in advance what happens or what some other reader thought happened.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/03/prologues-and-spoilers.html

"The Warrior" is almost entirely and purely a characterization exercise. It's all about Dresden's sense of proportion and his personal values. No two readers will interpret it alike. And it's an instant classic that can't be spoiled. But if you like, page down to END SPOILER and continue reading.

----------BEGIN SPOILER-----------------


The story opens as Dresden makes a mistake. He's been sent photos that seem to be a threat against Michael, the retired wielder of a Holy Sword. Currently, Dresden has custody of two of these Holy Swords, but not the authority to wield them. Dresden wants to protect his unarmed friend, Michael, and takes Michael's old sword to him, showing him the pictures someone sent him. A stalker is after Michael's family and friends.

Michael refuses the Sword.

Dresden moves through the city investigating who the stalker might be, trying to Private Eye the problem away, and as he does so, he does a few little things he barely notices doing -- he's just moving through the city concentrating on the real threat, the stalker.

Michael's daughter is kidnapped by the stalker and the ransom is both Swords.

Now these Swords are an Honor, a Holy Calling, each belonging to an Archangel (the real kind) and a fabulous amount of magical power is inside each Sword. They are unique. They are special. And they have the power to protect the innocent, maybe save the world. They must not fall into the "wrong" hands. Dresden is their guardian. He takes that seriously.

Dresden doesn't even think about it for two seconds. He'll give the kidnapper the swords to get the girl back. He has no ego-investment in being in possession of both of these Swords, but he respects and believes in their power.

At the exchange, a fight breaks out. Dresden and Michael win, but Dresden has to remind Michael not to hit the kidnapper too hard.

The last scene is where the meaning of this story, and its commentary on Dresden's character, come clear. Dresden has once again conquered a serious enemy tackling the enemy head-on, though this time a mere mortal human being who isn't even a Wizard. He's sitting in the balcony of a cathedral waiting for Michael and others to finish patching up the kidnapper when the Archangel Gabriel appears sitting next to him.

Dresden barely blinks at that. He lives in a world where such beings are natural. The Archangel Gabriel talks idiomatic English and points out to Dresden that even though he does not wield one of the Swords, he is nevertheless a Warrior fighting successfully for the Light. Then Gabriel enumerates the results of Dresden's easy, unthinking peripheral actions along the way through the story.

What Dresden thought he was doing, what he thought the problem was (stalker; kidnapper after the Swords) was not the most important thing Dresden did that day. The side-effects, the collateral repairs in the world that Dresden made by his apparently trivial knee-jerk responses to situations actually did far more to bring goodness into the world than his titanic conflicts with the magical Forces of Evil.


-------------END SPOILER---------------

Dresden, no matter how he thinks of himself, is The Warrior.

And you and I learn a lesson from Dresden. Everything we do, but most especially the things we do without thinking about them, -- the negligent, the peripheral, the habitual, -- all those little deeds are the ones that count in Collateral Repair of the world.

I read "The Warrior" after I found a message on the EPIC List from Morgan Mandel who had posted a blog about 8 reasons to comment on blogs. And in Blake Snyder's SAVE THE CAT! and Harry Dresden's Sword problem, I found a reason Morgan doesn't have on her list (though her list seems to be growing).

http://morganmandel.blogspot.com/2009/01/seven-reasons-to-comment-on-blog.html

Her reasons to post comments on blogs pivot around the benefits that might accrue to the commenter.

Commenting on blogs for such reasons as she mentions would be the kind of "Goal Directed Behavior" you'd find in a Hero undergoing a story where he/she was about to learn something the hard way.

But commenting on blogs is usually (at least for me) a peripheral activity, a by-the-way done as a reflexive response on a subject I know something about -- sort of like Clark Kent blundering down the street or Harry Dresden acting from his heart, just because he can. And I think it's that way for a lot of people (political diatribes excepted).

Blogs are not central to most people's life goals, yet we who read blogs get something out of it, something intangible but worth the time. When a certain sort of person reads a blog entry and gets something out of it that's worth the reading time, he/she will drop a comment on that blog just to thank the blogger. Or a comment on a comment.

After reading Angel Gabriel's explanation to Dresden, I suspect that commenting on a blog comes into the category of being The Warrior.

Maybe only one person other than the blogger will read the comment, but the effect that comment might have on that one person could be enormously out of proportion to the effort it takes to write the comment. Your comment might save or redirect a life.

Often the comment becomes longer because in thinking how to say thank you, the commenter will put some effort into verbalizing a response that shows they read the blog entry and understood it. As a result, the commenter also gains a deeper understanding of himself and the issue -- as well as providing a "Scotty, you earned your pay for the month!" to the blogger.

I do think the main reason to comment on blogs (or to blog) is that somebody you've never met might read your comment, benefit from it without even knowing who you are. Thus you have a chance to repair the world in the most powerful way.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.slantedconcept.com

Writing Cross Genre: Putney, Klasky, Knight and Agent Kristin

I had the pleasure, along with Nebula award winner Catherine Asaro, to co-host an internet radio show on CROSS GENRE FICTION last week. Guests were:

Mary Jo Putney, Mindy Klasky, Angela Knight,

and literary agent Kristin Nelson:

http://lilliancauldwell.podbean.com/2009/01/06/crazy-tuesday/

It's a two hour show. A long time to sit and listen so here's a tip: it's in approximately 20-23 minute segments with guest appearances as follows:

Putney

Klasky

Nelson

Knight

You can use the player's slider to advance to the segment you want to listen to, or download it to your own player.

Lots of terrific information on writing to genre expectations, crafting multi-genre books and some valuable insights from Agent Kristin on what NY is looking for...and why.

Enjoy! ~Linnea

HOPE’S FOLLY, Book 3 in the Gabriel’s Ghost universe, coming Feb. 2009 from RITA award-winning author, Linnea Sinclair, and Bantam Books: http://www.linneasinclair.com/

“If we can’t do the impossible, then we need to at least be able to do the unexpected.” —Admiral Philip Guthrie

Human Evolution and why we love the "Bad Boy"

What do British racecar driver Damien Hill, Virgin magnate Sir Richard Branson, Sir Francis Drake, Sir Richard Burton (translator of the Kama Sutra), the first homo erectus out of Africa, and my alien romance hero Prince Djetthro-Jason have in common?

They are (or were) all thrill seekers, high level risk takers, extreme sportsmen, and no doubt were considered a menace to society by one or two of their more sedate contemporaries.

Margaret's Thursday blog changed my mind about what I'd say in my first blog of 2009. I've been in the UK for a month, exposing myself to BBC TV and also to "DAVE", and one of the very fascinating documentaries I saw was by a TOP GEAR frontman (who is a bit of a daredevil badass himself).

It was about fear and fearlessness. It was also about human evolution.

Some people don't feel fear the way most of us do. Some feel it more. Some a lot less.

Now, I wouldn't want to go on one of those extreme Disneyworld rides. I'm like the Top Gear guy's mother, who patently didn't enjoy some monster ride. It took a trip down a bobsled ride (where his head could have been ripped off by an unforgiving wall of ice at any moment) to scare the Top Gear guy.

Apparently, people who choose to do dangerous things for fun or for profit are genetically a bit different. It takes a lot to excite them. They aren't happy with normal, sociable thrills. They are the sort who will pick fights to make life a little more interesting.

I'm not sure they are covered in the Beatitudes. There's no "blessed are the troublemakers and the mavericks..." as far as I recall.

In peacetime, they are a bit of a nuisance. They tend not to be team players. They go off on dangerous adventures, get themselves into trouble and have to be rescued by the Coastguard.

However, their continued --persistent-- existence, and their inability to be like the rest of us, is a hint that mankind has not lost its capacity to evolve. The gene that brought "us" out of the sea, out of the trees, out of caves, out of Africa, across frozen land bridges and across vast oceans on papyrus rafts (if Thor Heyerdahl was correct) and on open longships and on galleons, and into space is still with us.

We will evolve in space. A visit to the Johnson Space Center tells us that. Our heads will get bigger, and the rest of our bones will lose mass. We'll suffer kidney stones until we adapt. Perhaps we'll evolve bigger plumbing. Something happens to spines, too, but I cannot recall if they elongate... I rather think they do, because I remember thinking that tricky surgery to correct stenosis of the spine could be done in a space station.

Which brings me to the great mystery of Romance literature: why we love "bad boy" heroes.

Possibly, we like to dream of the vampires, the werewolves, the mutants and cyborgs, the pirates, the rakes, the highwaymen, the bikers, the hit men, secret agents and licensed killers because something deep within us ( us ladies) is ready to be turned on by dangerous guys like this when our world changes, and breeding selectively with them becomes necessary for the survival of the species.

And now for something completely irrelevant....

While I was away, I was thrilled to discover that Knight's Fork won the amazonclicks.com Authors' Choice Book of the Month award. Thank you to all the authors who voted for Knight's Fork. Thanks also to all the readers who voted. I understand that for a while, it looked like Knight's Fork might take both awards!




http://www.amazonclicks.com/Allwinners.html

The Future of Human Evolution

The January SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, a special issue on Darwin and evolution, contains an article called “What Will Become of Homo Sapiens?” It addresses the widespread belief that the physical evolution of our species has stopped. I admit I’ve tended to assume that’s the case, at least for the foreseeable future. Thanks to technology, many of the physical differences that would have affected individuals’ survival under primitive conditions have become irrelevant. People who once would have died in infancy grow up to reproduce. And someday gene therapy will enable most couples to have children without worrying about genetic defects they might otherwise pass on to descendants.

This article undercuts the assumption that Homo sapiens has reached a stable plateau in evolution. It mentions changes that have occurred in the time since modern human beings arrived on the scene (a mere instant in terms of geological eons)—for instance, the development of racial differences; varying disease resistance among ethnic groups; the capacity for some population groups to digest milk after childhood. (It’s easy for Americans of European descent to forget that “lactose intolerance” is the norm, not the exception.)

Will a new human species ever arise? The article points out that speciation depends mainly on isolation of some kind. Separated groups tend to drift apart genetically, so that if they eventually reunite, they find they have become too dissimilar to interbreed. Globalization has made us members of a single worldwide breeding population. Special circumstances might produce the isolation necessary to spawn new types of humanity, though, such as colonies on distant worlds unable to communicate easily with Earth or a global disaster that breaks up the survivors into small, widely separated groups.

And then there’s genetic engineering. If biological science develops the ability to design preferred traits into human embryos, parents with access to this technology will inevitably use it. A division might arise between the classes who can afford custom-designed offspring and those who can’t. Would the differences become wide enough to engender separate species, though? The article also poses the possibility of symbiosis with machines, leading to the development of a new kind of human race sufficiently different from us to be thought of as a distinct species.

I’m more intrigued by genetic engineering, however, which of course reminds me of the Sime-Gen universe. Although we’re never told how the change occurred, it seems likely that artificial tampering with genes was involved. The development over a mere thousand or so years of a whole new energy-producing system, not to mention visible features such as tentacles, is radically more extreme than developing immunity to a particular disease; it seems to require artificial intervention. Remember the short-lived TV series PREY? It had an exciting premise of a new human species living secretly among us. In execution I found it disappointing. For one thing, the new species didn’t literally prey on us in any way (wouldn’t it have been cool if they’d been energy vampires?), and their hostility toward us didn’t have any rational motive that I recall. I don’t think closely related species of birds or mammals kill each other on sight; unless they’re competing directly for the same resources, they’re more likely to ignore each other. More important, the cause of the new species’ evolution was ridiculously attributed to global warming since the late nineteenth century. That’s far too short a time for a separate species to evolve, and the planet has experienced much greater temperature variations since the advent of Homo sapiens, with no species differentiation as a result. Now, wouldn’t a TV series based on the Sime-Gen books be not only more logical but more fruitful of intriguing plotlines? Well, we can dream.

Margaret L. Carter (www.margaretlcarter.com)

The Cycles and the Seasons

Margaret Carter raised an interesting point in her New Year's post.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/happy-new-year.html

All of Earth's cultures have noticed we have a "year" -- a solar year, or cycle, and picked a point of the circle for a "beginning" of the year -- and made that a celebration of some sort. Fiction worldbuilders writing for an Earth audience have to take this kind of celebration into account when creating alien cultures - and romances across that cultural gap.

Also this year the standards authorities have brought to our attention that the Earth's rotation is slowing, and this year the master timekeeping standard atomic clock was adjusted another second.

We've only been able to measure accurately for a little while, so presumably the slowing has been going on since Earth began rotating.

Still, the Day is part of the Year cycle. The slowing, the lengthening of the Day and year, indicates a kind of non-permanence about our situation on Earth and around this star. Time is elastic. What changes can begin -- and end. The slowing of the Earth's rotation puts a whole 'nother spin on things.

In the Torah, the Creator of the Universe assigns the proclamation of the New Moon, and the New Year to the human venue. We are responsible for choosing the marking and celebrating of TIME itself -- and as Margaret pointed out, all our cultures create and innovate on how to do this. But NONE of these cultures have chosen "wrong" -- they're all "right" -- all at least OK. Because it's the human prerogative to divide and mark the cycles of Time.

From the human perspective, we all know "time" is "relative." The 20 minute wait in the dentist's office is much longer than the 20 minutes spent watching your favorite movie, or bedding your lover.

If Time were to be absolutely regular and objective, the Creator could have just assigned the cycles and markers to suit Himself. But now, only NOW, we discover that Earth's spin is not precisely repeating. No two years are alike. And it's up to us to call the end and beginning of cycles.

More than that, we now understand how our Sun fits into a spinning Galaxy that's moving through space.

In truth, no two successive years (days or months or any other cycle) are THE SAME. There actually is no "repetition" -- yet we are given the responsibility to mark the anniversaries of a death of a close relative, and other Events that are featured in our personal and collective History. All our cultures and religions have a year's calendar of Holidays commemorating such Events.

Yet the Earth is never -- ever -- in the same place twice. Even in the billions of years it takes a Galaxy to rotate completely, the Galaxy has moved through space and the suns do not come back to the same "place" in space-time.

I used the galaxy's rotation and move through space in setting up the backstory of two novels (now available on fictionwise.com as e-books as well as used on Amazon) - Molt Brother and City of a Million Legends.

Each moment of life is unique. Imagine that.

Margaret brought up one of my favorite novels by Robert A. Heinlein, Time For The Stars, where twins are used to communicate telepathically from Earth to FTL ships.

That reminded me suddenly of a wonderful little book -- HOW TO BUILD A TIME MACHINE by Paul Davies, from Penguin Books paperback 2001 -- reprinted through 2003.

I don't know if this book is still available. It might be woefully out of date with respect to the newest discoveries in astrophysics. But that wouldn't matter to worldbuilders writing fiction.

HOW TO BUILD A TIME MACHINE is popular physics which explains clearly in layman's terms how it is that there can never be any such thing as simultaneity at interstellar distances.

Gravity distorts space-time in such a way that the galactic civilizations we write about really can't exist or function as we describe them -- as analogues of Earth at the time of sailing ships.

My mind is still absolutely dizzy about this concept. Even Robert E. Forward (an astrophysicist) in order to write a good novel had to kind of cheat his way around this concept.

And then a couple years ago I took a course which I've mentioned many times in blogs and my review column ( http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2007/ ) and which led to a series of 6 review columns which I called the Soul Time Hypothesis. Those 6 review columns presenting this concept of the relationship between the Soul and Time became the basis of a course I gave in the Spring of 2008.

The mind-boggler is that the soul enters manifest reality through the dimension of Time.

Physicists obsess on measuring Time because it's a factor in almost all the key equations that describe the physical universe. So possibly they'll keep on studying and finally discover that the non-simultaneity concept has to be changed to something more amenable to SF writing. After all, physics said FTL travel is impossible, but we write about it. And physics said matter-transmission is impossible, but it's been done in the Lab (albeit on sub-microscopic particles). So maybe there's hope for writers.

Maybe, by writing such imaginings, getting others to imagine the universe CAN have simultaneous effects on events across galaxies. Maybe we can actually change the way the universe works? If Time is so plastic -- maybe other things are likewise responsive to human imagination? That was the theory behind Marion Zimmer Bradley's MISTS OF AVALON - a wonderful novel of Arthurian Legend's women.

Or alternatively, the power of the human imagination to change the functioning of the physical universe could become the reason that galactic aliens want to destroy Earth and all humans? What a threat - our novels alter THEIR reality! What a Helen of Troy lovestory!

Actually, I approached that idea sidewise in my novel DREAMSPY. But I fudged the physics with a little magic. Anyone know another novel that plays with that concept?

I don't really know how to "worldbuild" myself a universe strictly based on the non-simultaneity concept that includes the Soul-Time Hypothesis and that would work for a novel's background. Yet more than likely a blending of those two ideas would depict our objective reality (if there is such a thing) much better than any novelist has yet managed.

Well, then maybe the key for writers is to create some Aliens who do understand the universe in that blended way - non-Simultaneity plus Soul-Time, and just proceed from there?

Oh, wait -- actually, I think Edward E. ("Doc") Smith did that with the Lensman Series and his Arisians vs. Boskone war that stretched over millenia. I read all those books when I was in grammar school and High School, and they made a deep impression on me. They're still available in a recent reprint.

I haven't seen anything even remotely similar lately. If you have, please drop a note about them on the comments here. But don't forget that the Lensman Series had the first really HOT romance in the space-travel SF field. I've always wished I had auburn hair.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/
http://www.slantedconcept.com

WINDOWS TO THE SOUL

One of the interesting things about studying the craft of writing is that you realize 1) there is no one right and perfect way to write and 2) concepts you think you know can be overhauled and freshened with a mere turn of a page and a new phrase.

One of those phrases, for me, is Window Character.

Next weekend my local RWA chapter is hosting an all-day workshop with Todd Stone of Novelist’s Boot Camp fame. Stone’s workshop is great not only because he’s an ex-Airborne officer who teaches in a kilt. But because of his merger of military tactics and discipline with the often wiggly and elusive craft of writing.

Window Character is one of his terms, his concepts.

It’s not something I didn’t know about. Secondary or tertiary character is probably an equally as apt description. If you go by archetypes, this would be the “Friend,” the confidant. The character who can function as the sounding board for the main character.

Stone’s twist on this is not only to make the character the sounding board but to make the character a window to the past.

This nicely addresses the problem of info dumps and backstory. I’ll get to why in a moment.

Stone writes: “A window characters…provides multiple opportunities to give the reader glimpses into your protagonist’s true nature.” The key thing is that your window character knew your main character BEFORE the story began. And knew him very well. (And yes, the antagonist can also have a window character.)

Stone says: The window character is a subordinate who
1) Shares the protagonist’s experiences
2) Has a relationship based on friendship not romance
3) Has conflicting personality points with the main character
4) Has the same agenda or understands the main character’s agenda
5) Must let the main character have the foreground

Yes, the window character is a secondary character and we all feel we know all there is to know about secondary characters. But what makes the window character special or slightly different are the points above. Most succinctly, the window character has been on the main character’s journey for a while. Or knew her “when…” This is an almost guaranteed solution to the icky problem of backstory.

Backstory are all those things that happened to the main character BEFORE the novel actually starts. Backstory likely shaped the main character into who he is at the story’s start and very often provides the motivation and explanation for his actions. But backstory is boring, it’s mostly unnecessary and if amateur writers have one consistent failing, it’s the flailing around in backstory in the book.

“Fiction is forward moving,” says writing guru Jack Bickham.

“People pay more money for prize fights than reminiscences,” advises writing guru Dwight Swain.

Those are two reasons why backstory is so deadly and why a window character is the perfect solution. The writer doesn’t need several paragraphs explaining the disastrous ending of the protagonist’s previous marriage, which is backstory. The writer needs a window character to see, hear and feel the experience as the main character and the window character interact with each other (with reader as voyeur):

“How are your holidays so far, Theo?” Liza was still squatting next to
him.

“Fine,” he lied. “Yours?”

“Kids are up to their eyes in toys they don’t need, as usual. And they can’t even get to the ones under the tree until Christmas.” She nudged him with her elbow and grinned. “My husband’s cousin Bonnie is in town. She’s a couple years younger than you, thirty-four or thirty-five, single. Real cute. Like you.” She winked. “You’re clocking out for vacation, right?”

He nodded reluctantly. He’d wondered why she asked about his schedule when he ran into her at the courthouse yesterday. Now he had a feeling he knew.

“Why don’t you come by the house tomorrow night, say hi to Mark and the kids, meet Bonnie?”

He rose. She stood with him. Liza Walters was, as his aunt Tootie liked to say, good people. But ever since he’d divorced Camille last year, Liza had joined the ranks of friends and coworkers trying to make sure Theo Petrakos didn’t spend his nights alone.

“Thanks. I mean that. But I’ve got some things to do.”

“How about next week, then?

I’m sure you’ll like her. You could come with us to the New Year’s concert and fireworks at Pass Pointe Beach.” She raised her chin toward Zeke. “You too, Zeke. Unless Suzanne has other plans?”

“New Year’s Eve is always at her sister’s house.” Zeke splayed his hands outward in a gesture of helplessness. “Suzy doesn’t give me a choice.”

Liza briefly laid her hand on Theo’s arm. “Think about it. You need to have some fun. Forget about the bitch.”

He smiled grimly. Forgetting about the bitch wasn’t the problem. Trusting another woman was. “I’ll let you know, but I’m probably scheduled on call out.”

“That Bonnie sounds real nice,” Zeke intoned innocently as Liza went back to photographing a splintered bookcase. “Thirty-five’s not too young for you. I mean, you’re not even fifty.”

Theo shot a narrow-eyed glance at the shorter man. “Forty-three. And don’t you start on me too.”

Zeke grinned affably. “So what are your plans for tomorrow night, old man?”

“I’m restringing my guitar.”

“Alone?”

Theo only glared at him.

Zeke shook his head. “Still singing The Down Home Divorced Guy Blues? Man, you gotta change your tune.”

“I like my life just the way it is.”

“When’s the last time you got laid?”

“If you focus that fine investigative mind of yours on our dead friend’s problems, not mine, we just might get out of here by midnight.”

“That long ago, eh?”

“I’m going to go see what I can find in the bedroom,” he said, ignoring Zeke’s leering grin at his choice of destination. “You take the kitchen.”

Zeke’s good-natured snort of laughter sounded behind him as he left.

(from The Down Home Zombie Blues by Linnea Sinclair, Bantam Dell 2007)


Both Liza and Zeke function as window characters in my CSI:Miami meets Men In Black science fiction romance novel. Theo—the main character—is a homicide detective. Zeke is his long-time partner. Liza is a forensics technician. Rather than penning…

Theo Petrakos is a forty-three year old detective who went through a divorce that has left him emotionally scarred and leery of relationships…

I let you in to Theo’s life and let his friends—my window characters—show you what’s going on with him. Did I know I was creating a window character when I created Zeke? (Who, more than Liza, continues to function that way throughout the book.) Nope. I’m a pantser, pretty much an instinctual, organic writer. The character just felt right.

Now I know why.

The other important function of the window character is to act as a sounding board for the main character’s ideas…and to throw monkey wrenches into them. This is a wonderful source of conflict because it’s not from the expected source: the antagonist. It’s from the main character’s friend. Who not only makes the main character rethink his plans but makes him doubt himself as well.

“And what do you think,” Theo asked quietly as his friend voiced the one downside he’d overlooked and now feared, “the news media will do to Jorie?”

Zeke’s mouth opened, then closed quickly.

“A freak show, Ezequiel. It’d be a fucking freak show.” Everyone would want a piece of Guardian Commander Jorie Mikkalah. The National Enquirer. The Jerry Springer show. And worse. Bile rose in Theo’s throat. How could he have been so stupid as not to realize what would happen? All this time he’d seen the Guardians’ reluctance to reveal their presence as a selfish act. And he’d ignored what Jorie told them the Guardians learned from experience: nil-tech worlds routinely acted illogically—sometimes even violently—when faced with someone from another galaxy.

“I’m not putting her through that.”

“The Feds will never let that happen. They’ll put her under lock and key.”

Another scenario he’d come up with and feared. “I’m not letting that happen, either.”

“Theophilus. I don’t think you have a choice.”

“Like hell I don’t.” Theo spun away from him and resumed pacing.

“What are you going to do, risk hundreds of people’s lives because you don’t want a bunch of scientists in some basement room of the Pentagon asking Jorie questions? I think she can handle that. She’s probably been trained to handle that.”

Theo could see the tight, pained expression on Jorie’s face as she told him about her captivity with the Tresh. He could feel her shivering against him. He could see her fingers trace the rough scar on her shoulder.

He could see her getting into a dark government sedan with darkened windows, knowing he’d never see her again.

His breath shuddered out. This was the only scenario he’d agree to. And that, too, had flaws. “I’ll give them the zombie, the weapons.” They had both Guardian and Tresh now. “I’m not giving them Jorie.”

“You can’t hide her in your spare room the rest of her life. She has no Social Security number, no ID. She can’t even get a job.” Zeke raised his arms in an exasperated motion. “Talk about illegal alien!”

“I’ll get her an ID. A whole identity.”

Zeke stared at him. “Be serious.”

“I am.”

“You know what that costs, a good fake identity?”

“I can take equity out of my house to pay for it.”

Zeke barked out a harsh laugh. “Brilliant, Einstein. Traceable funds. There goes your career.”

“I’m not going to write a fucking personal check.” Theo glared at him. “I’m not that stupid.”

“Then listen to yourself, damn it! You’re talking felony jail time. Your life down the shitter. You do know what they do to cops in the Graybar Hotel, don’t you?”

“You’re assuming I’d get caught.”

“No, she’d get caught, suddenly surfacing in all the databases.” Zeke ticked the items off on his fingers. “She’d have to get a job, buy a car, rent an apartment—”

“Not if she’s living with me, she won’t.”

“Living with—what’re you going to do, Theophilus? Marry her?”

Theo raised his chin and met Zeke’s question with a hard stare. This was one of the decisions he’d made driving through the bright Florida sunshine in the middle of Christmas Day with Jorie by his side. And a dead zombie behind them. “Yes.”

“You’re—Ay, Jesucristo.” Zeke dropped his head in his hands, then lifted his face slightly and peered up at Theo. “You got a thing for women with fake identities?”

The not-so-veiled reference to his disastrous marriage hit him like a sucker punch. Theo looked away, keeping his temper in check. But he couldn’t keep the anger out of his voice when he turned back. “I’m sorely tempted to kick the shit out of you for saying that.”

Zeke straightened slowly, eyes wide then narrowing. “You want to take it outside, Theo? We can take it outside.”

In the above snippet from The Down Home Zombie Blues, Theo’s partner and best friend is punching holes in everything Theo wants to do, in the very things Theo believes are the only answers to the problem. It even escalates to the point where the two friends threaten to come to blows.

This isn’t the usual conflict from the opposition. It’s the more deadly conflict from within. It strips the safety net away from the main character. It leaves him totally alone—which is exactly where he needs to be in the last quarter of a fiction novel.

The window character—who knows the main character better than anyone—is the perfect person for the job of conflict. Their shared history—their backstory—becomes a workable ingredient in increasing the conflict rather than info slathered on, stopping the flow of action.

So here I am, seven books in with Bantam, and I’ve learned something. Yes, it was something I was already doing—I wrote Zombie long before I read Stone’s book. But now I know why I did it, I know why it works, I know what it can do and because I know all that, I can do it better in future books.

Writing is often an innate process but that doesn’t mean we don’t need to understand the craft of creation. Actually, because it’s so innate and often elusive, it’s vitally important we understand the craft of creation: why did that work? And more importantly, how can I do it again?

That is, if you want to sell your next book.

Thanks, General Stone. ::Linnea salutes::

~Linnea

Linnea Sinclair
RITA award winning Science Fiction Romance
Bantam 2007-2008: Games of Command, The Down Home Zombie Blues, Shades of Dark
2009: Hope's Folly
http://www.linneasinclair.com/

Happy New Year

I have a certain resistance to the idea of celebrating New Year’s Eve in a big way (but, hey, any excuse to eat a festive meal and drink champagne is good) or make New Year’s resolutions, because the date is such an arbitrary, culture-centered convention. January 1 isn’t even the winter solstice or anything logical like that. (In the church calendar it’s commemorated as Holy Name Day, in honor of Jesus’ circumcision and therefore set eight days after Christmas, which at least makes liturgical sense even if not much attention is paid to it in some churches.) The Chinese New Year can fall in either January or February. The Jewish New Year usually occurs in September. The ancient Romans started their year in March, which is why September is named after the Latin word for seven instead of nine (and so on with October, November, and December).

Will interstellar ships reckon time by “stardates” as on STAR TREK, or will the crew and passengers cling to the familiar Earth calendar? The latter practice could cause some awkwardness, as in Robert Heinlein’s classic “twin paradox” novel TIME FOR THE STARS. In that book, it’s discovered that telepathy is not constrained by physical laws such as the speed of light and can thus be used for instantaneous communication between Earth and starships. Because telepathy occurs most often between twins, the communication team on the starship in the novel is composed almost entirely of twins. Because of relativistic time dilation, the narrator is taken aback to find a difference of several months between the day his brother on Earth celebrates their birthday and the day when it’s celebrated aboard the ship. The only way to avoid that kind of problem would be to invent a hyperdrive system that makes almost instantaneous travel possible and eliminates temporal discrepancies. Out among the stars, when the year begins depends very much on one’s point of view.

Come to think of it, though, New Year’s Day is less arbitrary than Mother’s Day and Kwanzaa, celebrated by millions even though invented by single individuals (the latter within living memory). So, what the heck, Happy New Year!

Astrology Just For Writers Part 5 - High Drama

Pluto and Vampires -- continued from Part 4

Last time we started to look at Pluto as the ruling planet of Vampires (friendly and unfriendly varieties).

Pluto is the best source material for villains and villainous schemes because Pluto is about Power, the use and abuse of Power, the way Power corrupts absolutely, and how power controls the world from the "underground" -- from the unseen parts of society.

Pluto is the symbolism you need in a novel that skirts the edges of the definitions of "privacy" and "confidentiality" and "secrecy." Pluto has a lot to do with espionage. When is it morally right to keep a secret? (see what I mean about vampires?)

But it has even more to do with the learning curve of the long-lived entities such as countries or Immortals.

Pluto transits last a long time. See the relevance to Vampires? Reincarnation love affairs? Yes, Pluto is said to occupy the spot in your natal chart that your Sun occupied in your previous life, and Pluto rules the natural 8th House so it is about death and rebirth.

Pluto has an elliptical orbit (another reason they decided it's not a planet but a "capture" from some other solar system. Ah, Alien Romance!)

For the last decades of the 20th Century Pluto was moving pretty fast (relative to its usual), but now Pluto has begun to move more slowly as it rounds its elliptical path.

In Astrology the principle is that the slower the transit, the more profound and lasting the change -- the more prominent the change in the history books.

All planets bring change on transit, but maybe the character of the change is different -- and many Astrologers argue that all the planets signify the same thing, change, just the speed differs and thus the magnitude of the change. Pluto's magnitude is the biggest, though it's such a tiny body and now, once again, the outermost of our solar system (that we know of).

Pluto is now, and once again, the slowest moving planet (from Earth's perspective).

Pluto takes 248 years to go all the way around the Sun. So every 248 years, Pluto gets back to the spot it was when you were born.

See what I mean about Vampires being ruled by Pluto?

Since Methuselah, nobody "alive" ever experiences a Pluto Return. Astrology spends a lot of effort studying the periods when a given planet returns to its place in the natal chart. These periods punctuate our lives if you can read the symbolism. Just as a comma can change the meaning of a sentence, a Venus Return during a long Neptune transit can change the meaning of your life.

We learn Astrology from "lore" not theory, and the theory of astrology is created from the lore.

We study people, real people, who experience this or that transit against the background of a Natal Chart that has this or that characteristic, during this or that time of their life, and keep lots of notes. Then the experiences of lots of people are compiled into general principles. The notes on which these conclusions are based have been kept for literally thousands of years.
That's how "rulerships" are "assigned."

Pluto is new to our lexicon of planetary experiences, and thus people are still guessing what it is really about. Mars was assigned long ago (Roman Times) to rule Scorpio and recently Pluto was added as ruler of Scorpio because many of Pluto's characteristics are just bigger, deeper, longer wavelength attributes of Mars.

That means that war is Pluto related, while Mars is battle related. Mars is marital strife, but Pluto is divorce -- see what I mean?

With a Mars transit you may get into a yelling match with the clerk at the supermarket; with Pluto transiting that sensitive spot in your natal chart, you might be mugged as you exit the store with cash clutched in your hand. Or car-jacked. Mars produces gossip. Pluto produces headlines.

Read up on Saturn Returns in Grant Lewi's ASTROLOGY FOR THE MILLIONS to see why the return of Pluto to the place at birth has to be significant in a Vampire's existence. (Saturn rules Capricorn) Grant Lewi wrote before Pluto was discovered, but the "return" principle is the same for all the planets. Consequences of actions taken during the cycle materialize, new starts are possible, and new troubles begin to descend.

As a Saturn Return is a time when consequences and responsibilities rule ordinary people, a Pluto-Return has to be a totally shattering Event for a vampire or other immortal.

The attack that murdered the Chabad Rabbi in Mumbai -
See my blog entry:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/12/mumbai-chabad-terrorism-love.html

- came when he was 29 years old, midst of or just after his Saturn Return (Saturn's cycle is 28-29 years). That ghastly ending was not his fault but was a possible consequence of taking the post in Mumbai (which is ordinarily a very peaceful city). (and I found out his wife was 5 months pregnant).

We're looking at serious, major, HIGH DRAMA, larger than life events here, the stuff of novels not real life.

Astrologically, there had to be many other confluences to complete the symbolism of such a prominent death by violence (astrology can't predict death because it's not a very important event in the life of a soul), but that illustrates the power of the "return." Those attackers were not the Rabbi's personal enemies. That attack was a skirmish in a war that's been going on for centuries, maybe longer and had more to do with international affairs than individual lives.

EXAMPLE: There's a branch of Astrology called "Mundane Astrology" and it deals with the Natal Charts and transits of whole nations and the world in general.

A lot that's been happening in the world since Pluto touched 0 Degrees of Capricorn can be understood in terms of Pluto symbolism, and when you grasp the Pluto symbolism you'll be able to create "larger than life" villains that people can read and accept as real.

So this discussion is about understanding the symbolism, not the fate of a particular country.

There's always argument about exactly when a country is "born" -- and the USA has several accepted natal charts that astrologers study. I found that in one of the most famous charts, (July 4, 1776, 2:13 AM, Philadelphia PA) the USA's 8th House Cusp is at 0:38 of Capricorn).

House cusps move very quickly with the tick of the clock, and there are many schools of astrology that calculate where the 8th House cusp is via different mathematics!

We're not talking about "facts" here but principles writers can use to craft stories. I want to use what you already know to let you see a pattern from an artist's point of view.

2008 was the year of the financial meltdown, starting with MORTGAGES (borrowing other people's money - 8th House; Pluto). Banks get the money they loan from depositors (government loans notwithstanding). Banks are an 8th House phenomenon.

248 years ago was 1760 - the USA hasn't had a Pluto return yet! By this natal chart, our Pluto is at 27 degrees of Capricorn, in our 9th House which is foreign affairs, foreign travel, foreign thinking, and justice, courts. Jupiter rules Sagittarius the Natural 9th House, Honesty.

If this natal chart holds, this phase of Pluto induced change should be over for us by September 2009, but Pluto then moves on to oppose our Natal Venus, Jupiter and then Sun. Pluto finishes our 8th House and enters the 9th in Nov 2019. By then the character of the USA will be wholly changed.

Watch how Pluto affects long-lived organisms such as countries, and you will begin to see how it signifies the kind of life events a vampire would face. Periodically. Routinely. Ho-hum, yawn, I'm bored with existence. Who could be bored the first time you ever face a "change everything" Event -- a lose everything or win everything Event? But the 20th or 1,000th time?

Recently, the Thailand government was toppled by airport sit-ins that trapped thousands of tourists. The Greek government is being challenged after a police shooting at a rock throwing incident. The Mumbai terrorist attack has aroused India's wealthy class to challenge the current Indian government, but not the form of government. Africa is a mess. There's unrest in every country.

The terrorist philosophical manifesto is about gaining power (Pluto) over other people's (8th House) public sexual conduct (physical sexuality; i.e. body exposure; 8th House). Their target to achieve this is the USA Economy -- an "economy" is "other people's money" and that's 8th House. Hide the women - that's 8th House, Pluto is hidden.

Political Revolution is (often, not always) a Pluto driven event.

Being toppled from "power" can be a Pluto type event from the point of view of the one toppled, but the same kind of thing can be signified by a transit of Saturn.

Pluto will topple by revealing the hidden, by sex scandal, by embezzlement, or sometimes by someone else wanting the power for themselves, by assassination.

Saturn often topples by failure, by running out of steam, by enemies succeeding, by losing the election, by a failure of discipline or authority, by getting your comeuppance, your just deserts. With Saturn, it's obviously your own fault; with Pluto it seems to be external to your self if you don't live several 248 year cycles.

You see what I mean by "drama" - Pluto is very High Drama indeed.

Pluto events are about the whole world more than any given individual, thus they lend themselves to drama where the Hero's own personal, private sex-life or love-life (or both) actually creates or topples Empires.

Pluto driven lives and events are the very substance of movies even more than of novels. Robert Ludlum move over!

Noel Tyl (as I discussed in my post Astrology Just For Writers Part 1)

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/07/astrology-just-for-writers.html

shows how Pluto is one part of a pattern that shows up routinely in the natal charts of the extremely prominent -- thus Pluto is connected to both fame and infamy.

A Pluto driven life has these gigantic, larger than life, ups and downs -- from which the individual usually comes back. Pluto supplies both the crisis and the strength to survive it. Pluto works perfectly as the plot driver of Blake Snyder's genre "Dude With A Problem."

Pluto driven love can range from the sickest, most violent obsession (stalking, kidnap, etc) all the way to the longest lasting, most eternal, and most animal-passion driven bonding of hunger and need.

So astrologers face a quandary trying to analyze a Vampire's existence. Is his (or her) natal chart the moment they were born as a human? Or the moment they first drew breath as a vampire?

Does a vampire who has been immured for a few centuries, going dormant until dug up, get a new natal chart when they "waken" again? Is that like reincarnation?

Does memory have anything to do with how you respond to transits? Does a person who has a total memory wipe have a new natal chart when they start recording events again?

Look at this article if it's still up:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7777385.stm

It's about about the finding of what may be a human brain, more than 2,000 years old, shrunken and barely identifiable.

So it occurs to me to wonder what if that were the brain of a vampire?

And then it occurs to me to wonder how a fossilized (really infused with stone) vampire body might respond to being "brought to light" (that's what Pluto does, exhumes, brings to light, turns up, discovers, exposes).

There's this fossilized body in a museum -- a vampire, of course -- and the vampire's Pluto return takes hold. What happens next?

The possibilities for the use of Pluto in stories is endless. Do you see that? Have I explained Pluto well enough for you to use it, see it in novels you're reading, in headlines and current events, and maybe use it in your own stories?

Do you see how artists work in color schemes, in palettes, and writers work in symbol groups that go together the same way as colors do -- harmonies, groups.

If you're writing a Pluto driven plot, everything in the novel (from the color of the drapes to the ages of the characters) has to partake of that SYMBOLISM GROUP which signifies Pluto, 8th House. If you choose from the palette of the planet driving the plot events, readers will believe everything in the novel (at least while reading) without objection because the novel's reality will resemble their own actual reality.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.slantedconcept.com

CHANGE OF HEART: the quandary of the comeuppance

Today’s blog picks up from last week’s blog, which was based on the movie, Serenity. (A great flick and one I heartily recommend if you’ve not seen it…and if you’ve not seen it you might not want to read further as again, this will contain spoilers.)

Last week I whined about the (what I felt) untimely death of the character, Wash. While I could see where it had emotional impact, it failed, for me, to engender character growth. So it left me feeling…confused. More than usual, that is.

Here I’m going to whine about the second part of my thoughts on Serenity—the apparent capitulation, the change of heart of “The Operative” who was the foremost antagonist in the movie. This was a man who rather gleefully admitted he killed children. This was a man who clearly had no problem killing anyone. He showed no remorse; if anything I had the feeling he saw himself as some kind of avenging angel of death. He advised those he was in the process of killing that they were dying bravely and for good reason. But he wasn’t apologetic. No, not that. He was a man doing a job he loved.

So when, at the end, Mal lets him live (bit of a surprise, that, but not fully unexpected), he evidently (off-camera) returns the favor and gets the baddies off Mal’s tail. There’s a scene where he comes to tell Mal good-bye and even though Mal threatens to kill him at that point (tagged with the ubiquitous “if I ever see you again”), clearly, this man is not the man who was the antagonist for most of the film.

What happened?

I haven’t a clue in a bucket ::ka-ching to Paula L.::

Most likely—as has been posited—there was supposed to be another film or movie for TV and he’d have a recurring role. That’s what the ending felt like but since that hasn’t happened (though I live in hope), the movie’s end left me feeling…strange (more strange than usual).

The character went out of character. He went from a heartless and somewhat haughty killing machine to—okay, not Mister Nice Guy. But he’d obviously found a stash of happy meds somewhere. He was removed as a threat, even to the point of turning on his former employer.

All because of Mal and the Reavers. I just didn’t quite buy it.

I’m not saying baddies can’t become goodies. They can. Susan Grant did that marvelously in her How To Lose An Extraterrestrial in 10 days in which Reef, the assassin from her Your Planet or Mine? is recast as a hero. She does this through one of the finest and most gripping first chapters. It worked, beautifully and flawlessly, for me.

I took a less bad baddie in the form of Admiral Philip Guthrie who straddled the fence between friend and foe in my Gabriel’s Ghost, fully came into friend category (though not without a touch of tension) in Shades of Dark and finally into his hero duds in my upcoming Hope’s Folly.

So understand I have no particular issue with an antagonist having a change of heart.

As long as you show me how and why that happens, and Whedon in Serenity didn’t do that.

I would have been far more satisfied with the movie if Wash had lived and The Operative had died. That, from a plot and characterization point of view, would have made more sense. As it was, it was the second WTF? moment for me in the movie.

Again, maybe scenes were cut. Last I knew, Mal left the guy secured to a railing in Mr. Universe’s lower chamber, with the tape of the “truth” about the world, Miranda, running on the big screen (without commercials, too!). Okay, gripping stuff. But based on the character to that point, it didn’t seem sufficient motivation for the guy to turn on his employers. He was no newbie. He was a seasoned assassin and had seen—and done—worse than that before. That much was shown in the flick.

Now, maybe what we didn’t see was The Operative’s teammates coming to rescue him and mocking him for his predicament. Maybe this threw him over the edge. Maybe the Alliance shunned him. And so he reacted. But we didn’t see that. We don’t know that. We don’t even get a hint of that.

It certainly does make the movie end “happier” though and maybe that’s my problem with it. I have this thing against forced happiness in endings. Yes, I write to an HEA (though some readers of Shades of Dark may quibble with that). But an HEA doesn’t mean Everything Is Now Perfect. Therein I think is the problem with some readers who want Perfect at book’s end, rather than logical to plot and character.

At Shade’s end (S P O I L E R), Sully is wounded, pretty seriously (so is Philip). The final scene is in ship’s sick bay and Sully is still wounded…but Chaz loves him anyway. Now, a few readers have asked me, “Couldn’t you have just fully cured him then and there and then had Chaz say she loved him?” The fact that Sully was still injured at book’s end took Perfect away from them. (It’s almost as if the fact—the main issue of the love between Sully and Chaz is ignored. Which confuzzles me. Loving someone who’s in perfect form is easy. Loving someone who’s injured takes a special, deeper kind of love. Doesn’t it?)

Anyway, the answer to “couldn’t I just cure him” right there is no. And the answer is no because it would have felt as wrong to me as Serenity’s ending.

Sully made some huge mistakes in Shades. The Operative did some really nasty shit in Serenity. Characters’ actions must engender reactions. That’s a basic law of the craft of fiction. It’s often illustrated by the old “if you show a gun in scene one, you damned well better fire it in scene two…” analogy. A character’s action in chapter one directly impact the actions in chapter two. You can’t have a character doing all sorts of nasty shit for six chapters and then in chapter seven—for no salient reason—suddenly he’s a veritable good neighbor. Everyone’s friend. All forgotten. There are consequences in fiction. In real life we’re not always aware of the consequences but in fiction—if the piece is to work—they are unavoidable.

Or else you risk writing Mary Sues or Marty Sams or whatever you want to call them.

“The reader needs someone to pass judgment on.” Writing guru Jack Bickham said that and that’s another reason why the laws of karma apply in fiction, right up front. And why things getting too pretty, too fast, violates credibility. Readers might not like the fact that Sully was so seriously injured at book’s end. But if I’d lightened up on him in the final chapters of the book, I would have been Mary Sue-ing out on the basic principles. And the reader would be denied the right to see the passing of judgment.

There’s nothing to pass judgment on if all is prettied up and forgiven. The punishment must match the crime. Sully had become a tad too big for his intergalactic britches. He needed to be taken down several notches. He needed to realize he’d likely lost Chaz. And Chaz needed to be there for him at book’s end because her story, also, had to make logical fictional sense.

Her journey is different from his.

The Operative definitely had a comeuppance coming.

He didn’t get it.

And I’ve not a clue in a bucket as to why. Do you?

~Linnea

SHADES OF DARK, the sequel to Gabriel’s Ghost, July 2008 from RITA award-winning author, Linnea Sinclair, and Bantam Books: http://www.linneasinclair.com/

Something cascaded lightly through me—a gentling, a suffused glow. If love could be morphed into a physical element, this would be it. It was strength and yet it was vulnerability. It was all-encompassing and yet it was freedom. It was a wall of protection. It was wings of trust and faith.

It was Gabriel Ross Sullivan, answering the questions I couldn’t ask. Not that everything would be okay, but that everything in his power would be done, and we’d face whatever outcomes there were together.

Merry Christmas

Recently I reread (again) parts of a fascinating book called THE BATTLE FOR CHRISTMAS, by Stephen Nissenbaum. It explores the shift from the REAL old-fashioned Christmas celebration to what WE think of as a "traditional" Christmas, the family-centered holiday invented in the nineteenth century. What the New England Puritans, like their English counterparts under Cromwell, objected to when they tried to abolish Christmas had little in common with our "traditions." To us, the medieval Christmas would have looked like a combination of Mardi Gras (masquerading, revelry, and inversion of the normal social order), Halloween (begging from door to door), Thanksgiving (overeating and over-drinking—well, a lot of us still do that at Christmas), and New Year's Eve (more drinking and revelry, noisemaking to drive away the dark; nineteenth-century American Southerners still heralded Christmas by firing off guns). All these elements combined at the winter solstice festivities because, in the northern hemisphere, December was the one time in the agricultural year when abundant fresh food (especially meat, because animals couldn't be slaughtered until the weather turned cold, and then the meat had to be either eaten quickly or preserved by salting) and leisure from heavy labor coincided. For modern people who complain about the holiday season starting too early and going on too long, this trend isn't a new invention; in some parts of Europe the Christmas-centered revelry extended from late November to Candlemas (early February). Complaints about the pagan roots of Christmas and its being celebrated in a secular rather than religious manner go back quite a few centuries, too. 'Tis the season to reread Terry Pratchett's HOGFATHER, which includes an abundance of incisive reflections on both the commercial and the ancient seasonal-cycle dimensions of the Yuletide festivities.

I'd like to post a couple of Madeleine L'Engle's moving Nativity poems, but quoting them in full would be copyright infringement. I think it's permissible, though, to quote part of one, "The Risk of Birth, Christmas 1973." It begins, "This is no time for a child to be born" and ends:

"The inn is full on the planet earth,
And by a comet the sky is torn—
Yet Love still takes the risk of birth."

Happy midwinter holidays to all!

Margaret L. Carter (www.margaretlcarter.com)