Astrology Just For Writers Pt 6 - Targeting A Readership Pt 2

The topic here overlaps and synthesizes two threads I've been developing in the search for means to change the image of SF/Paranormal/Futuristic Romance

Heather did a fabulous summary post of where we are now and how to get where we're going with Romance at
http://www.thegalaxyexpress.net/2009/10/does-science-fiction-romance-need-gene.html?showComment=1255723748380#c6797085517666242508

And I do agree that the prevailing market wisdom indicates we need a new label or BRAND logo for SFR. I think it will be derived from the seminal work that changes the landscape, what she calls the ground zero. (Rock-n-Roll; Punk Rock; Steam Punk, Urban Fantasy, New Wave, etc) That seminal work must have a visual element with an evocative label.

But in whom must it evoke what? Let's step back and take a longer perspective look at our market.

This look is founded in two of my previous posts here (plus all the others -- this is the phase of INSIDE THE WRITER'S MIND where bits and pieces get synthesized.)

Look again at:

1) Astrology Just For Writers Part 5
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/12/astrology-just-for-writers-part-5-high.html

2) Targeting a Readership Part One
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/targeting-readership-part-one.html

Now let's explore the use of Astrology over long, sweeping generations to look at what becomes popular among a given age group and why. Remember this post:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/choosing-age-of-your-protagonist-to-win.html

To synthesize all this into something a writer can use, we have to consider the Essence of Amusement, which is actually a separate topic -- what clicks your pleasure button and why. This is very mystical stuff with a practical application.

Rowena Cherry tickled the edges of "Essence of Amusement" in her musings about what a heroic-devil could and could not do in a novel and retain reader sympathy.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/for-gods-sake-im-kitchen-witch-i-cant.html

There are several discussions going on in the Amazon Communities boards for Romance about which hugely popular authors you just mysteriously don't like, and another about which authors you've stopped reading lately -- very illuminating.

Those Amazon Community Boards readers (you have to have an amazon account I think to get there, but here's the link)
http://www.amazon.com/communities/directory/ref=sv__1
are not reviewing so much as recommending books to each other. For example, there's a thread about "If I loved TWILIGHT, what should I read next?"

Lots of action in the Romance communities there, but I think there's more in the Romance community at Goodreads.com where there are a lot of authors involved.

The Amazon discussions are mostly by readers for readers, which being a reader, I find fascinating and useful.

But they're discussing their personal reaction to this or that novel series (and series are actually as hot right now as publishers seem to think. Readers don't want "the end" -- they want "ongoing adventures of," which makes the HEA ending concept worth re-thinking.)
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/beauty-and-beast-constructing-hea.html

If they like some characters or a fictional world, readers want more and more of the same, but they drop the series once it becomes more and more of the same. Just like TV viewers!

Being readers they don't know or care WHY they like or dislike, or gobble or drop, a story or even a writer's entire output. They just want their money's worth of amusement. That seems fair to me. And wise.

Harking back to Rowena's post on dialog snippets:

"Give me a good read!"
"What do you want?"
"How should I know? You're the writer. That's your job."

OK, roll up your sleeves and let's get to the dirty work.

The Essence of Amusement

Why are we amused?

What is amusement?

Why does a writer have to know?

Caution here -- some writers shouldn't know consciously what amuses their readers.

Other writers can't produce good amusement without knowing consciously.

Yet others need a little of this and a little of that to get it right.

Neurolinguistic programming is a scientific discipline trying to find the interface between brain cells and responses. Scientists long ago found a "pleasure center" which can be directly stimulated, even with addictive consequences.

Reading (fiction or non-fiction) either stimulates that pleasure center in some peripheral, possibly intellectual way -- or it turns off some pain center responses. It may do both on occasion to produce the books we "love."

That effect on engaging the imagination to stimulate or overcome some brain circuit signal would likely have remained the same since caveman days. Or maybe before that. 4.4 million years ago, at least, twice as long ago as previously assumed. I need to find out how long ago Pluto was "captured" by our sun, if that's in fact what Pluto is - a Capture.

THIS FROM THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ON HUMAN FOSSIL DISCOVERY - Oct 1, 2009
-------------
The fossil puts to rest the notion, popular since Darwin's time, that a chimpanzee-like missing link—resembling something between humans and today's apes—would eventually be found at the root of the human family tree. Indeed, the new evidence suggests that the study of chimpanzee anatomy and behavior—long used to infer the nature of the earliest human ancestors—is largely irrelevant to understanding our beginnings.
....
The Ardipithecus ramidus fossils were discovered in Ethiopia's harsh Afar desert at a site called Aramis in the Middle Awash region, just 46 miles (74 kilometers) from where Lucy's species, Australopithecus afarensis, was found in 1974. Radiometric dating of two layers of volcanic ash that tightly sandwiched the fossil deposits revealed that Ardi lived 4.4 million years ago.
------------
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091001-oldest-human-skeleton-ardi-missing-link-chimps-ardipithecus-ramidus.html

We are now learning how species shift and evolve abruptly and why -- two reasons: supervolcanos and magnetic polar reversals.

There's a lot of research on evolution of humans that traces a huge genetic shift to the eruption of a supervolcano 70,000 years ago from now. It's a genetic process called a genetic bottleneck, and I did a really short blog post on that at
http://editingcircle.blogspot.com/2009/10/toba-supervolcano-caused-genetic.html

This stuff about evolution and our ability to be amused is seriously primal, as Blake Snyder says (Save The Cat!)all screenplays that "open everywhere" just have to be PRIMAL.

PRIMAL is the key, and nothing is more PRIMAL than sex or violence (or both). Rowena Cherry just dropped a note on her own post
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/for-gods-sake-im-kitchen-witch-i-cant.html

Saying:
----------
Recently (as I mentioned on Heather's blog) a study was published that suggested more than 50% of romance readers want more sex in the novels they read.

Also, from my own observations and email exchanges with my Dorchester editor, marketability standards are changing. Some of the traditional "No-nos" are now acceptable.
-----------

If it's PRIMAL it sells -- provided it doesn't totally shatter a taboo. If you don't know about taboos and human culture, study some anthropology.

"Politically Incorrect" is another term for taboo.

In the film world, the term "edgy" means getting up close to the edge of a taboo but just not quite crossing that edge, so the almost-pain of anticipation is titillating, exciting, subconsciously disturbing, but not "run for the exits" pain. Laughter is the response to almost-pain. And laughter is a pleasure in itself. It's the ultimate goal of "amusement." Who doesn't LAUGH at unexpectedly terrific sex?

Done right, an "edgy" film about some social issue or political commentary can titilate the same nerve that gets a tweak from sexuality. "Playing" an audience with symbolism is just like "playing" a sexual partner to a maximized experience.

Well written fiction is configured just like good sex, which is why the ending of a story is called a CLIMAX.

Since films have to have the largest audiences because they are the most expensive to produce and distribute, "primal" has to be the watchword -- so essential an amusement even a caveman could understand.

And with the increasing emphasis on for-profit fiction, writers face a situation where the "edges" of "edgy" are shifting.

What is publicly acceptable has changed for whatever reason: possibly the audience is jaded; possibly a generation drilled in political correctness and sexual openness of the 1960's; possibly other factors such as Astrology may be involved; possibly all of the above.

So as Rowena correctly points out, editors are very aware (via twitter, facebook, myspace, goodreads.com amazon communities boards etc) that half the readers find the amount of raw sexuality in novels does not satisfy their need for amusement. They want more. But half the readers want the same or less!

If you look at the current political polls on approval for some government initiatives, we're right back where we were before 2008; the USA is about equally divided pro and con any issue, with about 15% in the middle apt to lean either way.

That political divide oddly mirrors the "acceptability" for sex in novels. I don't know if it correlates at all -- if the same people who want this political policy want more sex and the people who are against this political policy want less sex, while 15% in the middle are basically satisfied. I doubt anyone has done a study on that question. (who knows what may turn up on the web tomorrow!)

People with a taste for cerebral fiction (like SF or Mystery) don't necessarily also have a distaste for sexuality in fiction.

Cerebral thrills are only going to be sought out by the top 10 percentile rank of human beings, maybe 15 percentile ranks. Movies have to get 100 times cheaper to make in order to turn a profit off the top 15% of humans. The current tech innovations are bringing that target within range but it's not there yet.

Meanwhile, you'll always make more money off a bigger audience, so a writer should ponder how to frame their artistic output to reach the largest possible number of people with whatever the writer has to give.

Remember my post here on Winning a big film prize by choosing the age of your protagonist which I cited above?

Choosing protag's age to win an Oscar
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/choosing-age-of-your-protagonist-to-win.html

Audiences are grabbed by a protag they can understand and identify with.

Young people don't understand or identify with old people, and don't want to but old people were once young and understand, identify with, and yearn to BE young people. Old people have their own unique life-issues (remember the film COCOON? And it's precious sequel?) but the life issues of the young are not alien or irrelevant to the older consumer.

At the same time, YOUNG consumers can be swayed by advertising and peer pressure. Older people can not (waste of advertising dollars to target over 40 consumers.)

And that could be a problem we're having with SFR and author-advertising. SFR really targets OLDER people -- a ship's captain, for example, should be over 30 to be plausible, over 40 to be believable however sexy. The age of the protag determines the age of the core readership. You waste your money advertising to the over-40 crowd, but that's the target audience for most SFR. Now what do you do?

Alas, older people are not as easily swayed by peer pressure, either. The older reader doesn't read books because "everybody" is reading them - they read what they like. (odd factoid derived from reading Amazon Community).

In a post inside LINKEDIN I saw a publishing professional explaining to a beginning writer pondering self-publishing that publishing is not a "meritocracy" -- and books that deserve to be published don't necessarily get chosen to be published by the big houses.

That's a very good way to think about it because many working writers today were children reading voraciously when publishing WAS INDEED A MERITOCRACY!!! That's the model we've internalized - if my book OUGHT to be published, it will be. What a shock when it's not.

We've all read older books that became true lifetime favorites, cherished and re-read. Those books were published back when publishing was a meritocracy -- and publishing houses were the tax write-off wing of a larger enterprise. (really, that was the business model; publishing was supposed to lose money and if it didn't, the publishing house would get sold at a loss.)

Owning a publishing house was fashionable and an entre into the literati and higher social circles than mere CEO's could aspire to.

Yeah, snob appeal.

Editors were hired not for their commercial sense but for choosing books that "ought" to be published.

That was a different world. Today publishing has become a "for profit" business, cut-throat and thrashing in what seem to be death-throes (at least in paper publishing).

E-publishing and self-publishing have lowered the standards of the finished e-product so that you don't get that prestige factor just for "being an author."

"Authors" used to be in the top 1st percentile rank of the top 15 percentile ranks of all human beings.

Really, that's true. Way back in the early days of the Web, I took a "poll" thing about where I stand in the prestige ranks. As a writer, I hit the top. Professors weren't top. CEO's were top, writers just under.

Today it's different. With self-publishing, authors are maybe somewhere in the top 15 percentile ranks. Since that basically includes most all readers, readers don't flock to "authors" as they once did. Everyone knows a published author. It's not special or inaccessible. (working producers are still inaccessible but that's changing too)

Meeting an author is not the opportunity of a lifetime today.

The world has changed so we have a big opportunity to establish something new that could shape the world of the future.

But to achieve that, we have to get a grip on what is really going on as opposed to what all the financial decision makers assume is going on. That's the real work of a writer, a futurologist, an amusement vendor, knowing what nobody else suspects and using it to advantage.

There's a puzzle of the marketplace that has never been solved, and I can't say I have "the" solution. But by using a futurologist's thinking tools and worldbuilder's imagination, we might stumble upon a real clue specifically useful to Romance sub-genre writers, with this problem about spending personal advertising dollars to sway over-40 year old readerships.

The puzzle that bewilders editors and producers is simple.

"Why is this a hit, while that better thing isn't?"

Maybe it's not all entirely marketing?

The people who get rich are the ones who notice the first of the trend-setting leaders and flood in behind with imitations before the general public has heard of the trend.

Those trend-setting leaders are usually "accidents" -- mistakes editors made trying to pick a big winner, or little indie films that make it big at a festival.

Sometimes the trend setting author is a visionary, but sometimes the author is as bewildered by commercial success as the editor (Rowling comes to mind).

So successful editors and producers watch the fringes for something that has tweaked the pleasure-centers, clicked the Amusement Button and produced Amusement in a DEMOGRAPHIC SWATCH of the population -- a demographic with disposable income and the immaturity to be swayed by advertising.

In 2008, I did a series of columns (the first 6 columns of 2008) on Blake Snyder's approach to film structure using primal issues structured in a primal way.

http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2008/

And I followed that with a series of columns on the astrological effect of PLUTO being dramatic and "larger than life."

Pluto: Melodrama Unleashed is the series title of those columns.

Under Pluto, I discussed Noel Tyl's Signature of Fame, an astrological meta-pattern you can find in natal charts of the absurdly rich and famous.

That Signature of Fame pattern pivots on Pluto in the natal chart and requires a fairly experienced astrologer to sift out of the background noise. But Tyl's Signature hypothesis explains graphically why it is so many who are rocketed to stardom crash and burn on drugs, sexual dissipation, bad judgment, trusting the wrong people, or dying of some dramatic disease.

Pluto is a magnifier of drama (among many other things). Pluto is just power, raw power, sexual power, financial power, political power, power over OTHERS (as in the power to sell snow to the Eskimos).

Pluto is not the drama itself. Pluto mixes in to an ordinary life event and magnifies it, blows it up, exaggerates, makes melodrama. You don't just drive your car into a ditch, you rocket off the Golden Gate Bridge leaving shattered traffic barriers behind.

Some handy current examples of Pluto in action.

When the economy crashed and burned at the end of 2008, it was after a long, slow shuddering buildup showing symptom after symptom that the "experts" ignored, which is typical of Pluto.

"I knew that would happen! Why didn't I pay attention?" And the answer is that Pluto represents what is underground, hidden, what is infrastructure. Plumbing, bridges, highways, electrical grid. You never notice it until it collapses.

So finally (it wasn't the beginning; it was FINALLY) Lehman Brothers melted down.

That coincided with the contact of Pluto to the 8th House cusp of (one of) the USA natal chart guesses. (astrologers argue about which chart is the real birthchart of the USA and all the candidates have different degrees for the 8th House cusp).

Pluto rules the Natural 8th House which is Scorpio, so when Pluto in current real-time comes to a degree that is a natal 8th House, Pluto's normally exaggerated effect is exaggerated more than 100%.

So we didn't just have a recession, we had a financial foundation infrastructure melt-down which magnified the recession we were due for.

8th House and Pluto and Scorpio symbolize the resources of others, (for a country, that's taxes and borrowing from foreign governments)

Obama was elected President with Pluto transiting opposition his Natal Venus, which is just about conjunct the USA Venus. (Venus rules Taurus-finances and Libra-Relationships).

Obama also had Neptune transiting his Ascendant casting a huge, magnified (Pluto) glamor (Neptune) over all his relationships (Venus).

His ability to speak was also at a lifetime best (Venus rules the voice box) etc. The whole country resonated to his way of handling relationships, and will for a while yet.

Pluto magnifies. It's about POWER.

Put a raw electric feed from the grid directly into your house circuitry and your house will just about EXPLODE with sparks and gouts of flame. No step-down transformers between you and the power plant, and E-GAD! The rest of your natal chart is the step-down transformer network through which POWER from Pluto (yes and your Sun) gets configured to be usable for daily living.

In "The Celebrity" that step-down-transformer network does not bring the voltage down to usability all the time -- and the result is extreme fame followed by a melodramatic personal meltdown (marriages-divorces; drugs; drinking; diving a plane into the ocean; spectacular rare diseases that make headlines)

8th House is Scorpio, one of the water signs, and thus participates in psychic attributes. People with a lot of water sign points in their natal chart are psychically open on some level, often without knowing it. That can help a Celebrity read an audience.

The first 6 columns I've done for 2010 which will be posted starting in January 2010 are all about The Group Mind (the psychic bond among us all at the Scorpio/Pluto/8th House level). In those columns I examine the interactive effects of the Group Mind and the Media -- analyzing popularity at its source.

http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2010/ shows you the novels analyzed to reveal connections.

Hidden connections are Scorpio, Pluto, 8th House.

Pluto power can also manifest as a ruthlessness, obsessiveness devoid of conscience -- the perfect raw material for any arch-villain a writer might need. Secretive is a keynote of Pluto. 8th House, other's resources, plus secretiveness equals conspiracy. Wow, dynamite material for any writer.

Pluto is the upper octave of Mars that rules War (Aries, the First House, the supremacy of Ego). Mars is a cat fight, a squabble, a grab for some country's fertile fields. Mars is not violence but ego-energy, and if thwarted can use FORCE to impose the personal Will.

Pluto is war to total annihilation -- war exaggerated, with nothing personal in it. This is not war to possess the resources of another, but war to obliterate the other.

Pluto is capable of VIOLENCE with an iron clad will, an implacable purpose. But Pluto is not the violence itself, it's the magnifier that takes the violence erupting elsewhere in the chart and makes it implacable.

Pluto is the sexual "fun" derived from violence, especially the kind of violence perpetrated to control another (S&M) - games of sexual dominance played out on an international stage. (think THE GODFATHER). 8th House is also inheritance, the resources that are rightfully yours by inherent worth. Thwart that "rightful" possession and you get the explosive manifestation of Pluto. Pluto doesn't take what belongs to others. Pluto takes back what belongs to him. And everything belongs to him, by right of inheritance. Even if he has to kill to inherit. (fabulous villain material)

So why are we talking about Pluto while analyzing amusement?

We need a new theory of what amuses people for our New Electronic Age, and here's one I would like to explore.

Pluto is now making its last station on 0 degrees of Capricorn, just a bit past the USA 8th House cusp, and headed for a series of oppositions to the USA natal chart's most sensitive points.

We're in for a roller coaster ride, but if we can understand what makes Drama as Blake Snyder formulated it (2008 columns), and how the Group Mind interacts with Media (2010 columns), we can see what Pluto is magnifying.

If we then put all that together with the various other posts linked above, connect the dots and figure out what the NEXT most popular thing will be, we may trump Rowena's Dorchester editor (a great publishing imprint, BTW) and produce that Ground Zero work Heather's post on Galaxy Express talks about.

How can a writer come to understand their audience's "amusement" buttons?

The natural 5th House, Leo, ruled by the Sun, is usually considered the home of AMUSEMENT, the keynote of FUN. 5th House is where we play and recreate, procreate, speculate and gamble . 5th House is siblings and children and grandchildren, and all our love given to others. (it's opposite, 11th House is the love and appreciation we get back in return, the groups that accept us and appreciate our fun loving sense of humor.)

You'd think that to find out how to amuse people, to find out what amuses people in general, you should examine the 5th House.

But if you look at the explosive popularity of video games (based almost exclusively on violence, on KILLING opponents as a way of WINNING, of prevailing, of asserting dominance) and correlate with the demographic of the consumers of video games (teens at the threshold of sexual maturity) and then look at where Pluto was transiting during the years those teens were born, you might learn something startling about the nature of Amusement that can be sold in packages (8th House; other people's money).

In assessing any astrology problem, the hierarchy of planets is OUTER to INNER. First you look at the eclipse points, then PLUTO -- and everything else is commentary.

Most astrologers are taught to start with the Sun ruler of the Natural 5th. For our purposes, that won't work because it won't yield generational profiles.

What do generations have in common? The signs in which the outer planets Pluto, Neptune, and Uranus, are placed. The Sun goes around once a year. Those outer planets keynote generations by their slow movement. The Sun position binds generations together (each generation has an equal number of Leos, Aries, etc.). The Outer Planets separate generations.

Since advertising dollar effectiveness depends on generational age-groups, we need to look beyond the Sun for the key to the puzzle, "What Amusement Can Be Packaged And Sold For Money?"

Individual natal charts have the planets and signs in different houses, all aspected differently by faster moving points such as the Sun, Moon, Mercury and Venus. Really, when it comes down to it, astrology almost shows us why we seem to have nothing at all in common! No two of us are alike!

But as marketers have discovered, generations do have something in common with regard to taste.

What each generation wants (thank you Rowena for the "What do you want?" line) is a mystery until one of those obscure products (like hula hoops) suddenly explodes onto the scene.

There is a theme to each generation born, something that will amuse them all their lives long, in various different forms and formats.

How long Pluto stays in a given sign changes because Pluto's orbit is very elliptical, and it even cuts inside Neptune's orbit. That odd orbit, out of the plane of the ecliptic and slanting across another planet's orbit is what got Pluto demoted from planet status -- it's considered to be a captive from outer space rather than a planet formed from the plasma of our star. (BTW that is an old story, done to death in SF -- that Pluto is really a generation-ship, maybe with only dead or stasis passengers; the remains of a dead civilization out there somewhere).

So Pluto is an obsessively fascinating planet, but empirically you can see that as it changes signs, the world changes usually explosively or abruptly -- social mores change; civilizations rise and fall to the beat of Pluto (and maybe super-volcanoes and magnetic pole flips).

But on a very subconscious level, (and Pluto rules the subconscious values while the 2nd House ruler Venus rules conscious values) the Amusement Button for each generation may actually be best described by Pluto's sign in their natal charts.

What fascinates, obsesses, causes unbridled aggression -- what is it that marketers can use to get a handle on each generation?

It isn't what makes people laugh. It's what people of that generation simply can NOT take their attention away from. People will pay big bucks for what they obsess over subconsciously, bucks they won't pay for a quick laugh gone in an instant.

People would not pay $9/pack for cigarettes without nicotine (or a substitute that works as well.)

Consider these blocks of years and what topped the charts in music subjects, favorite actors, great political trends, shifting taboo lines, great-huge-magnified tsunamis of trends during these blocks of years.

Pluto takes 250 years to circle the sun, but it's in each sign (or 30 degree swatch of the zodiac) for different lengths of time.

Remember to add say 15-20 years to see when these folks would have an impact on amusement markets because they have disposable income.

PLUTO IN LEO 1939 - 1957 (Became The Flower Children of 1960's and '70's)

PLUTO IN VIRGO generation 1958 - 1972 (Gen X)

PLUTO IN LIBRA generation (assimilating out of justice?) Late 1971 - 1984 (Gen Y? sort of)

PLUTO IN SCORPIO generation 1985-1995 or so (video game generation?)

PLUTO IN SAGITTARIUS generation 1995-2008

PLUTO IN CAPRICORN (now - 2023)

Neptune Takes 165 years to circle the sun.

NEPTUNE IN LIBRA Oct 1942 - 1957

NEPTUNE IN SCORPIO 1957 - 1970

NEPTUNE IN SAGITTARIUS 1970 - 1984

NEPTUNE IN CAPRICORN 1984 - 1998

NEPTUNE IN AQUARIUS 1998 - 2011

NEPTUNE IN PISCES 2011 - 2026


Uranus 84.3 years, a lifetime.

The popular press uses the 20 year swatch for a "generation" usually, or a demographic bulge of kids all born within 10 years to define a "generation." But think about the list above and see if it doesn't make better sense than the popular press definitions.

LEO is the natural 5th House of Amusement, but also of sovereignty --

Pluto in Leo produced the Flower Children, fun on drugs, altered consciousness and "doing my own thing."

Pluto in Virgo produced Generation X, craving White Wine and monied elegance. The detail oriented upwardly mobile fashionistes. There weren't many of them because the Baby Boomers (1947-1960) and Flower Children didn't have their kids until later in life.

Pluto in Libra produced Gen Y.

Wikipedia says there's no set borders for Gen Y but they're the Boomer Echo generation, the Boomer's kids. You see The Boomers fit inside Pluto in Leo but don't take up all of it.

Gen Y was coming of age in a "liberated" world where political correctness is everything, intermarriage is the norm, and women have their children only in the last minute panic of the biological clock. Many Gen Y kids have older parents.

The last of Gen Y turned 20 in 2004, coming out of school into a crashed economy, desperately in search of social justice (Libra is Justice) in a world they believed they didn't owe anything to (unlike the Boomers who flocked to President Kennedy's Peace Corps). Gen Y is the first generation to have computers in HIGH SCHOOL classrooms, and pioneered video games.

The following is from Brookhaven History
http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/history/higinbotham.asp

----------QUOTE---------
In 1982, Creative Computing magazine picked up on the idea that Tennis for Two might be the first video game ever and it published a story on the game ...
----------END QUOTE------

Gen Y came of age just as the possibility of video games emerged, and the home computer became financially feasible.

PLUTO IN SCORPIO kids -- only 10 years worth of kids -- grew up with computers in GRAMMAR SCHOOL classrooms and at home and became the market for the most violent video games. Pluto rules Scorpio, the Natural 8th House - when Pluto was in Scorpio it was its most POWERFUL. For the 1/12th of those kids born with Pluto in Scorpio in their own 8th House, Pluto issues are likely to rule the whole life.

There was a huge baby boom in the 1990's. Though it's only a 10 year span, 1985-1995 saw an unusual increase in the demographic significance of that generation who are now entering college and the lesser educated workforce.

That Pluto in Scorpio generation turned out the most young voters ever in this previous Presidential election, and you've all seen their vehemence (power) in political rallies (both sides of the issues!)

The generation reared on the most violent video games is determined to assert their right to their inheritance, their rightful possession by dint of the fact that they exist.

Employers have already noted that the current 18-20 year olds they hire are mortally offended by any workplace rule that prohibits texting during work hours. Employers have no right to restrict behavior or communication during work hours. (I saw a study about that posted online, and saw several interviews about it on TV, but didn't save any references, sorry. I may have referred to it in a previous post here.)

The Pluto in Scorpio generation (only 10 years long) has passed on their taste for video games to the Pluto in Sagittarius generation.

PLUTO IN SAGITTARIUS, 1995 - 2008, are still just babies, and their buying power is still mostly controlled by Gen Y parents.

But for us, it's interesting to note the success of TWILIGHT with the Pluto in Sagittarius teens.

Gen X acquired a real taste for the teen-vampire novel. The sex appeal of Vampires with the edgy connotations of risking death is soooo PLUTO!

YA shelves filled with vampires in the 1980's, which naturally gave rise to BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER a little later, and all sorts of vampire spinoffs for older people.

TWILIGHT and the urban-fantasy vision of reality as a thin film over a seething cauldron of evil is intensely popular with Pluto in Scorpio AND Pluto in Sagittarius.

Noel Tyl, an astrologer's astrologer, has identified the axis in the natal chart that describes one's deepest anxieties, fears, nightmares, repressed fears -- the kind of deep, inarticulate fears that rule our behavior and which we rationalize.

That axis is the 3rd House/ 9th House axis.

The Natural 3rd House is Gemini, ruled by Mercury (thought, communication, short trips, fast moves, and also indecisiveness and restlessness).

The Natural 9th House is Sagittarius, ruled by Jupiter, and all about Philosophy, Courts, Social Justice, the generous and magnanimous King, the kindness of the world, success by expansion, growth. Sagittarius is all about open-honesty as the adjacent sign of Scorpio is all about hidden realities. Sag is long trips, foreign countries, PUBLISHING!!!

Kids with Pluto in Sagittarius are the teens who gobbled up Harry Potter (foreignly published) when they were 9 years old, TWILIGHT etc, in their teens. TWILIGHT treats the darker (Pluto is "dark") aspects of the vampire as "out there" and mostly ignorable, while the vampires that are "in here" are trustworthy and above all that dark stuff - probably. In TWILIGHT the nasty part is "hidden" (Pluto).

Marketers have noted a leveling off of the growth of computer games sales (not shrinking, just not growing as fast as there are no more Pluto in Scorpio kids coming to buying age)

The trend in films toward ever more exaggerated violence and destruction, spectacle for its own sake, (TRANSFORMERS?) pleasures and amuses Pluto in Scorpio folks in some way that mystifies the Pluto in Leo folks. And I don't think it's just because the Pluto in Leo folks are older. I think it's because the Pluto in Leo folks have an Amusement Button that's configured differently.

When the Pluto in Sagittarius kids are 18-25, what films will they be taking their girlfriends to? What games will they spend their money on? What will amuse them life-long? What songs will they popularize? (already, I see lyrics changing)

The dark, ugly subject matter of the first wave of popularized rap is giving way to something else, but it's gradual.

If the Pluto in Scorpio generation pushed the violence in video games beyond all previous taboos, what taboo will the Pluto in Sagittarius generation (the obese kid generation -- Jupiter, ruler of Sagittarius is famous for obesity, the JOLLY FAT WOMAN image is usually Jupiter on the Ascendant) what taboo will this new generation expand out of all sense and reason? What will obsess them as violence and destruction obsesses Pluto in Scorpio?

I also noted in the above list of transits how the position of Neptune correlates to the position of Pluto in the generational charts.

Neptune is all about illusion; Neptune, ruler of the Natural 12th House, Self Undoing, rules all things having to do with imagination, with glamor (Hollywood), charisma and also Religion and Idealism, and oddly today with technology and engineering (Pisces folks make marvelous Engineers. Engineers blend science and mechanics into technology using IMAGINATION.)

Neptune dissolves and blends.

Neptune is very hard to get ahold of conceptually.

Neptune, as I've discussed in various blog posts, is the key influence in any Romance situation. Your very personality dissolves during that key Neptune transit where you fall in love. Your bullshit filters dissolve. Your critical faculties shimmer away.

Neptune transits put you (whoever and whatever you are) into your own most receptive (Scorpio is a water sign) state such as you've never experienced before. Neptune transits allow that soul-mate bond to form.

What forms and solidifies under Neptune can never be destroyed -- that's the odd paradox of Neptune. It dissolves everything concrete but solidifies the vision. Neptune is all about hope.

It's about Magic and fantasy, hopes, dreams and imagination and everything you wish were real but isn't -- and everything you hope to God isn't real.

The generation born with Pluto in Sagittarius mostly have Neptune in Aquarius. Aquarius is the natural 11th House, as we noted above, Love Received, appreciation lavished upon you. The Pluto in Sagittarius (Justice; different from Libra's brand of Justice) generation must, as a Group Mind, be dreaming of being loved, adored, appreciated, elevated.

Tom Baker, the actor who played The Doctor in Doctor Who for about 20 years, was himself a multiple Aquarius (yeah, I found his chart).

The way he portrayed The Doctor exemplified the footloose, fancy free innovator who formed only temporary but intense ties with people who passed through his life. He cared about humanity -- not actually so much about individual humans except as they represented humanity. It's a tough distinction to make without making the character seem like a villain. But it's there if you look..

Aquarius males have a very easy time getting married, and a very very hard time staying married. They exemplify the utmost in loyalty but can't see why that should tie them down. Freedom. It's all about personal freedom.

So synthesize Pluto in Sagittarius with Neptune in Aquarius and see if you can determine the configuration of Amusement Button for the whole generation now just beginning to turn 14.

There are a lot of them and they will have buying power.

Marketers know that teens have more discretionary spending money than their parents.

When they're in college, what habit will they have become addicted to? (Pluto is that sort of energy; addiction, habit, subconscious).

Here are a couple of addendum notes to mull over while trying to nail the Amusement Button for the current teens.

-----------------------
Article on why it is that Science Fiction authors just can't win in this world (not sure I agree with definition of "win" but this is good advice in the making.

http://editingcircle.blogspot.com/2009/10/why-science-fiction-authors-just-cant.html

Is a very short post with the following link
http://sffmedia.com/books/science-fiction-books/417-why-science-fiction-authors-just-cant-win.html

So the core of the advice is that if you want a "genre" to gain respect, you have to drop the genre label and invent a new one.

Sylvia Louise Engdahl gives us a really explicit example of how this is being done today with her FLAME novels,
Stewards of the Flame and
Promise of the Flame,
stories of all-human societies but not on Earth, on Earth-derived colonies out there somewhere.

The setting demands the genre label SF, but the characters demand the label futuristic romance, and the plot (and huge, long, lazy expository lumps with the flavor of mainstream literary novels) demands the label philosophical fiction. Reading the FLAME novels is like reading early Heinlein but for modern readers.

So Engdahl has dropped both the YA label in which she became famous and the SF label.

------------------------------
Article on Women Horror Fans and film makers
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/movies/06oran.html?_r=2&hpw

“Jennifer’s Body” was designed with both feminists and 15-year-old boys in mind, a seemingly eccentric blueprint that, as Ms. Kusama points out, is in line with the best movies of the slasher tradition. “It may be one of the best ways for a young male audience to experience a female story without feeling like they have been limited by a female perspective,” she said.

"It was an effort that often bedeviled Ms. Cody and Ms. Kusama, who tried to balance brute violence and lesbian kisses with the film’s more substantial metaphors. “The tricky thing is if you’re going to subvert those tropes, they have to be there,” said Ms. Cody, whose script is a self-described “crazy, chaotic homage” to the horror films of her youth. “We were constantly bobbing and weaving. Karyn and I talk about the film as a kind of Trojan horse. We wanted to package our beliefs in a way that’s appealing to a mainstream audience.”"

"Horror films have adapted with Darwinian fortitude over the years, allegorizing everything from cold war paranoia and eco-anxiety to the breakdown of families. And yet the success of slasher movies, which exploded with films like “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” in 1974 and came to dominate what we now think of as scary movies, might have stalled cinema’s most resilient genre. "

The director Rob Zombie, whose recent release, “Halloween II,” revamps another 1970s proto-slasher (and one of the original “final girls,” the character Laurie Strode), says the genre’s indulgence has been its undoing.

“The ’80s are the decade that ruined everything for everybody,” he said. “The soul went away, and it became gore for the sake of gore, and kids were cheering at killings and yelling and screaming. It became a roller coaster ride. And of course once something becomes a roller coaster, all you can do is build a bigger, more extreme roller coaster. That’s where I think horror movies really got perverted.”

----------------------

There's a lot more to say on this topic of generational taste in amusement.

TAKE AWAY:
The important point is that people will pay more than they can afford for amusement that obsesses them, but not for amusement that merely entertains.

Those over 40 can't be enticed or attracted by advertising that costs money. Those currently over 40 were born with Pluto in Libra, Neptune in Sagitarrius. Go for it!

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Romantic Times Award Winning Dushau Trilogy
NOW ON KINDLE

For God's sake, I'm a kitchen witch. I can't do magic....

I'm having trouble getting over the sexy menace in Jacqueline's dialogue (I like it so much):

"Devil!"

"The same," he intoned with an elegant bow. "Now we shall see who has summoned whom."

She gasped. "What do you want?"
------------------

By filling in the missing material, the dialogue suddenly makes sense.

"Devil" identifies a figure the reader can "see" -- and "What do you want?" characterizes the brash and self-confident woman, while the "gasp" shows she isn't as poised as she wants the Devil to think she is. So there's characterization of both in the dialogue, and the plot is advanced by the demand "what do you want?" The story is left hanging by "what do you want" as we try to assess whether she'll give it, fake it, try to trick the Devil, or scorch him with prayer to a higher authority.

How about "scorch him with a prayer to a higher authority"?
Which higher authority?

What would a white witch, or a Wiccan, or a feminist pagan do? I've got six in-depth questionnaires on my desktop, but nevertheless, I had not considered what my heroine might do if confronted with a hostile devil, or someone who might or might not be a devil. After all, unless it is Bedazzled, why would the Devil need a car?

Suppose my heroine isn't a convinced and committed pagan. When she social networks, she talks of praying to The Goddess.  She writes "Blessed Be" or "Namaste" at the end of her emails. But, might she throw out a panicked "For God's sake...." to hedge her bets?

"Hey!" a bystander shouted. "What's going...?"

The Devil hissed something. The bystander froze.

"Get in the car, or I'll be forced to harm anyone else who sees you," the Devil gritted.

(I suspect that I'll need another action here... but would it interfere with the pace of the abduction if my heroine protests the harm to the bystander, and is told that she can undo the freezing spell?)

"For God's sake, I'm a kitchen witch. I can't do magic."

"I can. Get in the car."

This leads me to another puzzler. How badly behaved can a hero be and still be sympathetic as a hero yet convincing as a "devil"?

Obviously it is okay for an alien devil to kidnap a heroine or two as long as he means to make an honest woman of her. (Grinning at the sexism of that cliché!) He cannot rip her bodice, although he can want very much to do so.  He can accidentally damage her, but he cannot deliberately hurt her. He can kill lesser beings who attack him first. But he cannot permanently petrify Good Samaritans simply because they are inconvenient.

Or can he?

The Galaxy Express

For those of you who haven't found this discussion, yet, Heather has got a hot one going on
about science fiction romance.

http://www.thegalaxyexpress.net/2009/10/does-science-fiction-romance-need-gene.html?showComment=1255723748380#c6797085517666242508

Romanticon

Erotic romance publisher Ellora’s Cave (www.ellorascave.com) put on its first annual Romanticon last weekend in Ohio near the publisher’s headquarters. This is one of my publishers; I have several paranormal erotic romances out from them, plus a contemporary elf romance from their non-erotic division, Cerridwen Press. The con was cozy and relaxing, with (from what I heard) about 150 people attending. Only about half were authors, meaning the other half were fans of our books. Cool! The vast majority were women. I saw only a few men other than the seven or eight cover models who posed for pictures and performed roles such as announcing raffle ticket winners at the big group events.

I’ve never attended (or even heard of) a convention strictly for one publisher before. It turned out to be a delightful experience. The very nice program book, in trade paperback format, included detailed summaries of the panels and pages with spaces for each author’s name, so people could collect signatures in a systematic way. I signed more autographs than I ever have at one time, thanks to that feature. We had a huge book fair Sunday afternoon. I got to stay for most of it (having to leave for the airport about fifteen minutes before the end) and sold four or five books. The Friday night event was a “psychedelic soiree,” a casual meal of hot dogs, hamburgers, etc., with music from the 1960s and early 1970s—my generation’s sound. The music was way too loud, but I’m always on the losing side on that issue. Sigh. The tie-dyed theme carried throughout the weekend but was especially prominent on this evening. I enjoyed seeing people’s fringed miniskirts and other hippie attire. I wore a caftan.

The Saturday night dinner included recognition and awards, some serious, most of them fun and frivolous, such as “most erotic use of e-mail in a story” and “hottest home improvement.” One nice feature was the presentation of “Rising Star” trophies to all the authors who had new releases this year. As far as I’ve experienced, Ellora’s Cave treats its authors well. The personal touch is one of the advantages of writing for a small press, whether E or print.

Panels and presentations discussed business and genre-related topics for writers. I thought the most interesting and useful features was the set of reader focus session, in which readers gave feedback on what they like and dislike in various subgenres of romance. The 50- to 60-minute time slots didn’t really leave enough room to talk as much as people wanted. Under the moderation of the managing editor, these sessions were lively and a rousing success. To me, the most interesting and useful was the discussion on taboos in romance. What situations and character types turn readers off? What words are or are not sexy?

Naturally, people didn’t all agree about language. Whether certain words are exciting or repellent depends so much on individual background and age. We did agree that some terms might work in context for a man to use in conversation, but the heroine wouldn’t use those same words. I brought up a gripe I have with my editor sometimes, the request to use the “graphic” (i.e., formerly known as unprintable) words in place of non-four-letter terms that are actually more specific. Many times, I think it’s more descriptive and even more exciting to specify what portion of the male organ (for instance) is being referenced than simply to use the generic “graphic” term for that organ. Especially when the same word gets used over and over again in a scene. The moderator agreed that variety is important, too. To me, “graphic” means lots of details and very explicit description of sensations and emotions. To the publisher, “graphic” means these elements PLUS a generous use of the words (or a certain two or three of them) you didn’t used to be able to say on television.

It was also fascinating to hear what readers and authors thought about behavior that would make characters ineligible to be heroes or heroines. For example, how close can two people be related and still have a romantic bond? Most people thought a stepparent and stepchild couple would be acceptable in some circumstances. Opinion was divided on first cousins, but nobody seemed to mind the idea of such a pairing in historical fiction, since those marriages were more common in earlier centuries than now (in this country, anyway). Any transgression in the category of harming children or cruelty to animals, everyone agreed, made a character irredeemable. Rape (no matter how far in the past) also barred a man from becoming a romantic hero. (That’s quite a difference from a few decades ago, when a relationship could begin with rape if the author could convince the reader of extenuating circumstances. No romance publisher would allow that plot device nowadays.) A murderer, however, could be redeemed, depending on the circumstances, his motive, and his emotional and moral growth since the act. A woman who’d worked as a prostitute could be a heroine, again depending on her reasons for taking up that career. Interestingly, Marion Zimmer Bradley redeems a rapist in TWO TO CONQUER. The story ranges over many years of his life, beginning in youth. We get to know him first as a character with good qualities and see the events that turn him into a hardened, selfish man driven by ambition. In redeeming him, of course, MZB has the advantage of telepathy. A woman with laran (psychic power) invades his mind to force him to see the rape through the eyes of his victim. Genuine remorse ensues.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Dialogue As Tool

Rowena Cherry mulled over the rewrite problem of the dialogue line:

""Devil!" She gasped. "What do you want?""

in her post on Monday.

First let me point out that your dialogue is absolutely off limits to copy editors and editors. But you can get back a lot of bright red circles with marginal notes saying "weak" "ineffectual" "unclear" "redundant" or even "out of character considering remark on p121."

Next, as I read this line of dialog, "She gasped." is a separate sentence and therefore "she" is not gasping the word "Devil." So that's OK.

But Rowena has posed a nice problem because the "right" word that goes in the second utterance absolutely depends on characterization.

The way a screenwriter solves this type of dialog problem is to refer to the character sketch notes and choose a main trait to illustrate with the dialog line. With screenwriting, dialog needs to be done that consciously because a screenplay is a work by committee. It's kind of like how you work in your own kitchen vs. how you work in a restaurant kitchen where there are dozens of people using the tools in shifts.

I have yet to discuss in this blog the integration of the various individual techniques we've discussed, characterization and dialogue being only two. The learning drill first combines each of the techniques in pairs with all the others, then in threes, etc until you are doing them all simultaneously. Drill-drill-drill is the key.

So here's two drills you can do with this swatch of dialog.

First note how the content of that second utterance depends on the plot and also on the story, as well as providing an opportunity to characterize and expound.

So that's 4 inter-linked (not independent) parameters that coalesce to generate that line of dialogue. Bad dialogue is produced by a lack of coalescing, not by a bad word choice. The bad word choice is a result, not a cause. Yes, writing dialogue is like walking and chewing gum. As long as you don't know you're doing both at once, it's easy.

The key to good "dialogue" (as opposed to natural speech) is that dialogue only works if the characters actually have something to SAY to each other, rather than to the audience. What they have to say resides in plot and story events.

But sometimes you want the characters to chatter at each other knowing someone is overhearing, or possibly unaware that the audience knows another character is overhearing. Overheard dialogue can spice up a plot, rev up a suspense line, or set up for a real funny payoff.

The "What do you want?" line we're playing with is not generated by ANY of the parameters I've named, nor any of the others that might be involved, as far as we can see from the excerpt.

That is why it falls flat, out of context or in context.

Let's spin some context examples out, just as an exercise.

-----------------
Miriam closed the warding circle behind her and lifted her athame to begin the summoning.

Displaced air thumped into her back. She whirled to find a tall, buff and naked rouge figure outside her defense circle.

"Devil!"

"The same," he intoned with an elegant bow. "Now we shall see who has summoned whom."

She gasped. "What do you want?"
------------------

By filling in the missing material, the dialogue suddenly makes sense.

"Devil" identifies a figure the reader can "see" -- and "What do you want?" characterizes the brash and self-confident woman, while the "gasp" shows she isn't as poised as she wants the Devil to think she is. So there's characterization of both in the dialogue, and the plot is advanced by the demand "what do you want?" The story is left hanging by "what do you want" as we try to assess whether she'll give it, fake it, try to trick the Devil, or scorch him with prayer to a higher authority.

It also made sense to me that the expletive "Devil!" might be spoken with ALL the breath, and thus a gasp was required before the demand or query, "What do you want?"

------------------

Ethan plugged the new computer into the wall socket. It whirred for a few seconds, then snapped and a little curl of smoke rose from it as silence fell in the kitchen.

"Devil!"

The monitor lit showing that same suave figure that had been haunting his dreams and nightmares, only this time the figure was enjoying a belly laugh right there on the dead monitor's screen.

Ethan gasped. "What do you want?"

"How should I know? You summoned me."

------------------

So the lame dialogue actually isn't lame at all, just under-written. One thing beginners often labor over is "business" -- the bits of narrative between bits of dialog that detail what the characters are doing while they're not speaking. Dialogue includes "business" because we all talk with our hands, often contradicting our words.

So suppose what we have is a woman recognizing someone as "Devil" and then getting in his face and getting right to business.

---------------

Carla opened the front door. Five little kids stood before an adult, all in matching fairy costumes. She started handing out candy, letting each pick their favorite from a large basket.

The adult stripped off his mask revealing a ruddy complexion and two neatly curved horns, a second mask.

"Devil!" She gasped. Smile frozen, she proffered the candy basket. "What do you want?"

The Devil smiled at the kids before him.

It wasn't a second mask.

------------------

Now let's see how to change just the "What do you want?" in that line Rowena was playing with. Let's do a characterization/exposition exercise.
Each reposte to the Devil's sudden appearance avoids an expository lump by illustrating a character trait.

-----------------

"Devil!" She gasped. "I suppose you're here to take the hindmost."

"Devil!" She gasped. "This is not, repeat NOT, your food cake."

"Devil!" She gasped. "Second hand smoke is toxic, you know."

"Devil!" She gasped. "I told you to knock before appearing!"

"Devil!" She gasped. "Will you put some clothes on!"

"Devil!" She gasped. "Don't poke that thing at me!"

"Devil!" She gasped. "If you don't get behind me this minute, I'll turn my back!"

"Devil!" She gasped. "Oh, just in time. My cooktop is on the fritz."

"Devil!" She gasped. "Bye!" POOF!!!

----------------

Frankly, I'd expect a copy editor would put one of those curly zigzag lines between "Devil!" and "She gasped." to reverse the order.

She gasped. "Devil! What do you want?"

I could play with this all day, but there's work to do.

So now it's your turn. Drop a comment with a rewrite of the dialogue line in question and name the techniques you used to generate the line.

Remember, as a writer your stock in trade is FUN, and if you aren't having fun, your readers definitely won't. So have FUN with dialogue.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://twitter.com/jlichtenberg

Dushau Trilogy now on Kindle
Dushau

Farfetch

Outreach

Folks, rowenacherry.com has been "spam bombed"

Friends,

Do not open any mail from rowena@rowenacherry.com
It might be a viagra pitch, or it might be a really bad virus.

Spam bombing is when some hacker decides to spoof my account and he sends out millions of spam emails every second to every email address in the internet dictionary.

It can happen to anyone with a public domain name, and there is nothing that can be done about it.

Please pass the word.

Best wishes,
Rowen Cherry

Le Mot Juste / The Right Word

Earlier this week, Brenna Lyons discussed lamentable editing in her brennalyonsden blog.


http://brennalyonsden.blogspot.com/?guestAuth=wb-HSCQBAAA.LmV9kd_7kVou7Z-jfClLqNGYZ9IkK1wXGnzncSji_Pk.EPicYVNVQEQ7sKImD_JhUg

Sometimes, repetition of a word is vital to the elegance of a sentence and the development of a thought. Repetition is a crucial component of oratory, whether it is a pattern of "Like.... like.... unlike" (Brenna's example) or "a gentleman of extraordinarily propriety.... a gentleman of extraordinary impropriety" which I misquoted from a Georgette Heyer novel.

When a misguided copy-editor gets hold of your carefully crafted words after you've signed off on the edits and makes a change behind your back, there is nothing you can do about it. Thus, in my e-book Mating Net "her Concubinage class" became "her concubine class", and my made-up, alien, scholastic discipline became a nonsense (at least, in my opinion).

If you are writing alien romance, or even a romance set in the future, you will probably need an occasional made-up word. And, if your editor substitutes a modern day synonym, I encourage you to be ready to justify and defend your original word or wording. You might win it back.

I've worked with four editors, and they have all been reasonable when I've presented a convincing case for --for example-- the arrogant alien Tarrant-Arragon to say "unsense" although we would exclaim "nonsense!" As demonstrated with Concubinage, not every won battle remains won.

The right word is worth fighting for.

But... how do you know what is the right phrase, or sentence? Is it a bit of a toss up for you, before you decide? Or does the right expression leap fully formed and perfect from your head, like Athena out of Zeus?

"Devil!" She gasped. "What do you want?"

Forget whether it should be "She" or "she", and whether it is possible to say "Devil" while gasping, and whether a spirited heroine would gasp after recognizing a devil.

What about "What do you want?"?

(Punctuating that quoted question within a question is another can of worms, I think!)

As Jacqueline Lichtenberg pointed out in a recent blog, dialogue in fiction is not real life dialogue.

Assuming that the Devil "wants" the heroine, "what do you want?" might be the best question. If your editor substituted "What are you doing here?" (unlikely... more wordy) or "Why are you here?" would you care? Would you fight for it?

Does "Why?" always trump "What?" in character-driven Romance?

Introducing "here" into the question subtly changes it. Now, the heroine's focus is on their location. Also the Devil cannot respond as succinctly. He can't answer, "Sex" or "You."

Even the most laconic of devils would have to turn the "What....here?" question back, and say, "I've come for you," or "Abducting you." Moreover, if he clearly states his intentions, that's like seeing Jaws before the first swimmer is eaten.

"How did you get here?" isn't dramatic enough to consider, even if he did just emerge from a hole in her bathroom floor, unless it's a story about logistics, and ductwork and plumbing... a futuristic Mission Impossible. It isn't.

On the other hand, "What do you want?" is a bit rude... abrupt, familiar. That might be fine if the heroine has met this Devil before. However, "What do you want?" could be said in at least three different ways, depending where the heroine puts the emphasis.

Do we explain this? Do we use italics?

Maybe I should look for a better greeting. "What are you going to do to me?" I think not. A devil might be tempted to answer with concise, shocking vulgarity. I don't believe that such crudity should appear in the second sentence on the first page of a romance novel.

It's not the best hook. It's certainly not a "stopper". For the time being, my Prologue has to start somewhere. I can edit later. Maybe, before the heroine speaks, she glimpses fingers thrusting up through her carpeted floor. Or through a grating in the floor. Or both.


This was erroneously posted to my Space Snark blog. Sorry for the repetition to anyone who follows both blogs!

Rowena Cherry

By the way, in a previous post, I discussed "stoppers".

Some examples of stopper:

“I don’t know how other guys feel about their wives leaving them but I helped mine pack.”

“I’ve been sleeping with your husband for the last two years."

“When the phone rang, Parker was in the garage, killing a man.”

If that's the gold standard, dross might be this year's Bulwer Lytton winners

http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/scott.rice/blfc2008.htm

Re: Brains

The DISCOVER magazine website lets you read complete articles online. It has a collection of thought-provoking items about the brain and the mind. For instance, this one about the neuroscience and biochemistry of the seven deadly sins:

I Didn't Sin, It Was My Brain

Which brings up the perennial question of free will. Do these physical phenomena "cause" our undesirable behavior—thereby making the concepts of guilt, responsibility, and blame irrelevant superstitions—or do they merely reflect the activity of a higher entity we know as "mind" or "soul"?

And here's an article about a conversation between two "chatbots," computer programs designed to answer questions and remarks with dialogue that simulates human responses:

I Chat, Therefore I Am?

We used to have a simple "psychologist" program of this type on one of our old computers, which would speak its lines aloud if the sound was turned on. Our kids learned to make the program recite words that were typed on the screen and enjoyed forcing it to pronounce numbers in the quadrillions or quintillions (it would translate figures into words). This application probably wasn't what the programmer had in mind.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Stephanie Meyer - Books->Film

--------------
BUT FIRST -- a public service announcement --

"Bloggers — particularly "mommy bloggers" — must now disclose freebies or money they receive to review products or risk an $11,000 fine per post, the Federal Trade Commission announced today. It's the first attempt to regulate what's known as "blogger payola.""

This ruling takes effect December 1, 2009.

That's from
http://baradell.com/ftc-issues-rules-to-end-blogger-payola

As a reviewer, I often talk here or reference books which have been sent to me by publishers (or authors) to review in my review column which is posted at
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/

And even if it was a free copy, I'll warn you off of a product that does not meet my standards or point out the flaw which might not matter to you. With a little practice, you'll know my standards and how they compare to yours.

I know I won't remember to put this disclaimer on every post, or to cite the source of every book (very often I don't know who sent me a given novel if I've lost the Press Release, which happens a lot)

Some of these books I discuss are freebies; some are not. And who can remember if some 30 year old title I discuss was sent to me free? Even before I was a reviewer, I was a SFWA member and as such got a lot of books free.

This ruling is impossible to comply with because the data is not available.

However, in this particular post -- I actually BOUGHT a copy of TWILIGHT at a Westercon from BOOK UNIVERSE which is a store operating out of Oregon. I don't yet have copies of the sequels or of THE HOST.

aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com is not my personal blog so I can't put a disclaimer in the header saying SOME books discussed here may have been promotional copies.

The article also says:
"While the FTC will obviously have a hard time enforcing these regulations, there can be no doubt that marketers regularly approach independent bloggers (and especially mommy bloggers) with freebies. When bloggers accept these exchanges, they may not always disclose them in the posts that result. So, while bloggers who are involved in these schemes often tend to say that they would have reviewed the product anyway or that their reviews are often critical, there can be little doubt that payments and freebies influence these stories."


Well, folks, nobody has ever approached me with any freebies because of this blog or any other that I write on. I get books via SFWA, The Monthly Aspectarian, Amazon Vine, and personal requests when I hear of them, and I even buy some. DVD's and other such items likewise. And if you read my review column, you'll see I ONLY review books worth reading (5 star level). Lots of what I get does not get reviewed.
--------END PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT------------------

I've just finished reading TWILIGHT by Stephanie Meyer, a trade paperback edition from Megas Tingley Books, an imprint of Little Brown.

On the front it says it will soon be a major motion picture. I've had this book for probably half a year high on my to-read stack, and only now gotten to it. I haven't seen the film yet, but I will.

From several sources, notably
http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/33694/stephenie-meyers-the-host-heading-big-screen ( @dreadcentral on twitter)

I saw the following
----------
Twilight series author Stephenie Meyer is about to see another one of her projects up on the big screen, and luckily for us, this one's geared toward adults. Rights to Meyer's The Host have been acquired by producers Nick Wechsler and Steve and Paula Mae Schwartz (who also teamed up for John Hillcoat's adaptation of The Road).
----------

I haven't read The Host (yet). *sigh*

From
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/

you can easily see that I do read a lot of (freebie) books and review only SOME of those. Still, there's more really good stuff out there than I can read.

I've always been a reader, even before I decided to go for publication. So I've acquired a view of the cross-section of the fields I've been discussing under "genres" -- see last week's post.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/genre-root-of-all-evil.html

That may not be a full and clear cross-section, but it's the view I'm working with.

Your view may differ and that doesn't matter because the point of these posts is to demonstrate the workings inside of a writer's mind, how it works, what you do with what you observe. An artform.

Art can't be "taught" but it can be "caught," which is the basis of the apprentice system of teaching.

The point of these posts is not to argue the veracity of the data used to derive conclusions, but rather to grasp the method by which conclusions are derived from data. First you practice with my data. Then you go find some data of your own and use the same method -- the result will be Art, very distinctively different from anything I could (or would) do, but still with the stamp of commercial potential clearly visible.

With that in mind, and Marion Zimmer Bradley's oft quoted admonition "The book the writer writes is not the book the reader reads" let's take a good look at TWILIGHT and the phenomenon of popularity in general (which is the ultimate point here -- how do you make Alien Romance more popular?)

And now I see what Stephanie Meyers did with Twilight (yes, I plan to read the sequels), how she did it, and what people love about it as well as what people have been complaining about.

As I've mentioned before "spoilers" can't spoil a really good book, and nothing I've read about TWILIGHT before I actually read the novel has made a dent in my own enjoyment of the story.

The story is great, but more on that later.

First let me point out there are many technical glitches that should have been fixed in the editorial process.

One glitch that really grated on my nerves was the portrayal of a non-cell-phone; dial-up internet culture, and then 3/4 of the way through the book, a character casually pulls out a cell phone, upon which nobody remarks, and from then on cell phones are everywhere. That's a continuity glitch.

Editorial could easily have fixed it by involving the Sheriff/father in demonstrations around a new cell tower being built nearby. Only out-of-towners would have active cell phones that would suddenly come online the moment they juice up the tower. Only out-of-towners would complain of the lack of cell service. The addition wouldn't have added any words that couldn't be trimmed from excess verbiage elsewhere.

I can't imagine how that slipped through editorial. But I'm used to reading fanzines and book manuscripts and "ARCs" (Advance Reading Copies) so errors like that don't really spoil the enjoyment of the story.

TWILIGHT grabbed me from the first page. I opened it because it's a Vampire story, but I stayed with it because of the locale.

Years ago, I considered moving to Port Arthur, close to the main setting for this story.

I ended up living in Phoenix, where the author lives, and part of the story is set. So I know both settings, and that may color my responses. The coincidence may not be random.

Now, if you've been studying the "expository lump" as discussed in Sexy Information Feed and the posts linked in it
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/sexy-information-feed.html

And this one on Michelle West's THE HIDDEN CITY.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/for-my-review-column-httpwww.html

you will understand this statement about Stephanie Meyer's (first novel!) Twilight.

She has committed (and sold to grand effect) a massively unskilled novel, and the truth is that is a very VERY common thing to have happen.

Future posts on astrology just for writers will show you how that happens and help you see when it will be most likely to happen to you. (No, Astrology can't predict "the" future, but it can show you open doors. You and only you shape the way you use those open doors. And yes, I see Divine Will as a component of how things turn out.)

So reading TWILIGHT is very like reading a really delicious fanzine more than it is like reading a tour de force like HIDDEN CITY by Michelle West which will curl the toes of any expert in writing craft and tickle most readers too.

The massive skill deficit behind TWILIGHT is one we have discussed in detail on this blog -- the expository lump and scene structure.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-tricks-of-scene-structure-part-2.html (and it's prequel post linked inside this one)

There is no mastery in Meyer's skill at hiding the lump which is almost the entire middle third or even half of TWILIGHT (I really do LIKE or maybe LOVE TWILIGHT for reasons I'll get to -- I love fanzine writing and I love the "Mary Sue" of which TWILIGHT is a fair example.)

BTW: the title TWILIGHT isn't right for this story. Post your suggestions for a title if you've read this novel or even just seen the film.

I don't know if anyone taught Stephanie Meyer "show don't tell" skills to avoid the expository lump in the sequels, or if all the praise made the editors protect her from learning these skills (I've seen that kind of pressure ruin new writers, and I've seen writers bear up under it and improve in skills despite roaring sales (Katherine Kurtz being an example.)

The expository lump is a tell instead of a show, and the most common cause of lumps is lack of CONFLICT. Without conflict there really is no neat way to SHOW anything. With CONFLICT, "showing" is easy.

Showing is illustrating by actions; or in the parlance of film, staying off the nose. The writer can't illustrate something that doesn't exist. CONFLICT brings things into existence.

In the case of TWILIGHT, the expository lump is disguised as dailogue mostly between just two people, the Vampire Edward and the human Bella.

The ostensible point of all this dialogue (not up to Buffy standards) is "getting to know you." The dialogue consists of asking questions about character, backstory, and worldbuilding facts. Without the appropriate conflicts, there really is no other way to convey this information but "on the nose" dialogue.

When you as a writer find yourself stuck in a dialogue trap, you know you have a missing conflict, and possibly a missing character.

So to get this complex and fascinating "world" across, the plot stops dead in its tracks while two people dance around each other and probe each other but without being at loggerheads, or cross-purposes, or in opposing camps, or misunderstandings, or secrets (think DARK BLUE) or anything that would illustrate a conflict.

But that stopped-plot problem is easily fixable on second draft if you know what caused it.

What really irritates people, even those readers who can't put their finger on it, is that the plot stops dead to progress the Relationship, which contains NO CONFLICT EITHER INTERNAL OR EXTERNAL, and therefore does not progress.

The relationship starts out perfect, without conflict and only a little strangeness which is easily accepted by both. From perfect, there's nowhere to go, so no plot and no plot progress.

During the dialogue scenes, the relationship progress becomes the plot, but there is no conflict to drive that plot, so it just sits there not even qualifying as a sub-plot.

This could have been cured easily by the editor who bought it sending it back with a rewrite note saying "put the werewolves and the killer vampires inside the school with Bella and Edward in Chapter One, and rework it so the threats escalate."

As it is written, both human and Vampire look at each other, storm and fume a bit at the awful problem of being attracted to a soul mate, and then gracefully and without event, they both accept the fact that they're soul-mates and proceed to ask each other questions about the nature of vampirism and relations between vampire and human, their respective childhoods, etc. The question of whether a Vampire even has a soul never comes up.

Both plot and subplot are at a standstill during this. Not even the third plot-line of Bella's mother following a second husband around a baseball circuit in the Southwest interferes with "getting to know you" conversations. Another set of (possibly werewolf) characters circle the edges and provide a hint of foreshadowing, but they don't matter to the "getting to know you" or to the ultimate threat (killer Vampires) that finally causes some action (meaningless and easily resolved action).

The werewolf premise sticks out like a sore thumb, a "plant" for future books. The plot-action here is created by some other vampires who JUST HAPPEN BY at an awkward moment. This violates a cardinal rule of story-telling which, if violated disqualifies the piece as a "novel."

That rule is simple. Accidents can trigger a plot - right before or just at, or just after the beginning, opening, chapter one, or preface. Accidents can CAUSE plot-problem but only if placed at the beginning of the story. Accident can be the "catalyst" beat of a script.

The theme then becomes something having to do with accidents -- karma, well deserved poetic justice, or an illumination of character that explains why someone deserves the adventure or come-uppance, or how things you don't deserve happen to you anyway.

But the cardinal rule is that ACCIDENT can not resolve a plot conflict. There are other forms of narrative that are popular, and don't even have a plot so don't need conflict, but we don't study them here.

Romance needs conflict. Conflict is sexy.

Well, since TWILIGHT has no conflict, there's nothing to resolve so maybe I shouldn't complain about the lack of plotting.

However, the un-caused, un-summoned, expected only by precognition arrival of killer-vampires is an ACCIDENT, so it's in the wrong place in the narrative. It should be in Chapter One.

The arrival of stranger vampires who just wander into town triggers the run-for-your-life sequence that ends in (off-shot, off-stage) violence, but it's violence without conflict.

That structure is the reason for the expository lump.

The only reason to insert the random band of vampires at that late point, after the "getting to know you" sequence, is to attempt a "show don't tell" that it's dangerous to "get involved in the affairs of wizards" and that this little girl Mary Sue character is tough enough to handle that danger (she thinks).

The flaws in TWILIGHT are legion. I won't enumerate because the point of this discussion is not how bad this novel is, but HOW GOOD IT IS, and why and how it has achieved such fame and glory.

I don't know the real story of how Twilight got to be such a best seller, nor how it got to become a film. But through my unique cross-section of the field of SF/F/Romance I see a clue.

The fact that Twilight has been financially successful in the woeful shape that the narrative work is in (it's as if it got published in 2nd draft when it needed to be 5th) tells me something that you possibly are not interested in.

So if you are not interested in the magickal view of the universe, seeing "reality" through the lens of Tarot and Astrology blended seamlessly with Science and even History, stop reading this post here. The rest of this is really, really boring.

*****

Now, all the rest of you try to grab this idea and hold it while you read on.

I personally am delighted and tickled that Stephanie Meyer and both her novels are so successful and can become films. This may be the break we've been waiting for.

These events, which appear on the surface to be Stephanie Meyer's personal triumphs, just as Harry Potter appears to be J. K. Rowling's personal and individual triumph, are in fact much, much larger than these individuals, and possibly not triumphs at all (I've discussed Pluto transits a bit, but there's more to learn -- Pluto transits don't deliver triumph but rather melodrama).

Gene Roddenberry's success with Star Trek went far beyond his personal life.

He's still being written ABOUT, and I've commented on this recent post which I found through a mention on Twitter

http://scifiwire.com/2009/10/michael-cassutt.php

Michael Cassutt has written about how many other people contributed to the phenomenal success of Star Trek (the success we're looking to repeat for Alien Romance) and mentioned Theodore Sturgeon and Amok Time which I've been talking about in this context on other posts on this blog.

Meyer's, Rowling's and Buffy's creator Joss Whedon's successes can be viewed as due to the confluence of what you might call magical forces.

(BTW Rowling and Joss Whedon are examples of success attained AFTER acquiring skill with conflict generating plot which progresses by show-don't-tell not expository lumps, and resolves at a precisely structured ending).

In the magical view of the universe, everything (people, places, things, artifacts) are all connected by unseen threads of energy, resonances. The Universe and all of us are of one piece. I've explained this in my Tarot posts here on this blog.

Rowling's work paved the way for the Twilight teen novel success.

See:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2009/09/hogwarts-bush-witchcraft-harry-potter.html

Which says:
--------------
"Harry Potter" books have sold more than 400 million copies and been translated into 67 languages -- not to mention the history-making film adaptations, which collectively have gone north of $5.3 billion in worldwide box office."
--------------

We all, as writers, aim for such towering achievement, and pursue that with dogged determination and soaring aspiration.

Our society and civilization are structured around some deeply hidden philosphical ideas (the kind of philosophy that rules your personal life even though you don't know you have a philosophy nevermind this one).

We are embedded in and awash with this philosophy. Like air we don't even know it's there. Or like a fish that doesn't know water is there. It's an unconscious cultural assumption. Transmitted to young children in school, it becomes an incontrovertible fact like gravity.

It is a Hellenistic philosophy, a view of the universe within which the entire "scientific revolution" was incubated.

For more on the residue of Hellenistic philosophy at the root of our culture, the root upon which the scientific view of the universe is grafted see my non-fiction book on the Tarot: Never Cross A Palm With silver.

(The publication of my 5 books on the Tarot is delayed waiting for ARTWORK to show-don't-tell the principles).

The following assumes you've read Never Cross A Palm With Silver (see Amazon, that first volume was published on paper), or that you didn't have to read it because you already understand the history of Philosophy. If you can dissect our world into a conflict between Hellenistic Philosophy and Biblical Philosophy (Kabbalah), then the rest of this discussion will make perfect sense.

We sometimes believe, because we are embedded in a Hellenistic world, that success such as Meyer has achieved is something you do on purpose, and somehow she has just had a little LUCK that we haven't had, due to no particular trait of her own that we don't share. Not only that, but she's not as good a writer as some of those reading this blog who haven't published for money yet.

That assumption can trigger jealousy -- "Why should she have all the luck?" "It's just not FAIR!" -- and jealousy (coveting your neighbor's goods) runs counter to one of the 10 Commandments of the Bible.

The magical view of the universe provides some good reasons for that prohibition on coveting as well as the means to avoid coveting (which the Hellenistic view does not provide because in the Hellenistic view, coveting is the essence of human nature.)

Consider when an "advertising campaign" succeeds, how the success is attributed to WHAT the advertising agency did, or how much they spent.

That's like the Hellenistic/Scientific view where the results of what you do depends entirely on what you do and never on who you ARE.

Advertising execs keep trying to do the same thing that someone else did and expecting similar success. That would work in the Hellenistic view of the universe, but not in the magical view.

Have you any idea how much money was spent advertising Space 1999 specifically to Star Trek fans after Star Trek was canceled? Space 1999 was sold as having an inevitable appeal to Star Trek fans.

Do you realize how much of that money was totally wasted because Star Trek fans just turned up their noses at the shoddy product that bore no recognizable resemblance to Star Trek?

The producers of Space 1999 thought they were doing the same thing Gene Roddenberry did, and that therefore it would succeed.

How much money was spent promoting Chicago for the Olympics only to lose to Rio?

Now I can't recall a recent Presidential campaign that spent less money than the opponent and still ended with the impecunious candidate winning. The most money almost always wins political campaigns.

But in political campaigns in the USA, most of the money spent comes from the very people who will vote & from corporations whose advertising responses have taught them public taste. So the amount of money collected for a political campaign is proportionate to the size of the support base for the candidate (sort of).

Sales campaigns don't work like that. All the ad bucks spent on a promotion come from the purveyer not the customer.

Can you imagine paying money to a Fund to pay for ads for Pepsi at the Olympics?

There's a different dynamic at work when you have a product to sell and need to advertise it.

See my post on Marketing here
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/marketing-via-social-networking.html

And notice this post from an Agent on writers' personalities and "networking"
http://cba-ramblings.blogspot.com/2009/10/dedicated-to-lone-ranger.html

When the product you are selling is entertainment, it gets very complicated because what entertains you is influenced by those invisible "connections" that bind us and our material universe into one. I hope to trace some of them for you in a future post here, another part to Astrology Just For Writers.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/12/astrology-just-for-writers-part-5-high.html

For now, remember my discussion of the Suit of Pentacles in the Tarot and the nature of a "Pentacle" and what it really symbolizes.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/10/ace-of-pentacles-setting-up.html

10 Pentacles can be taken to symbolize the epitome of success in the material world (a type of HEA), and many people would think that Meyer or Rowling have materialized that symbolism. Nothing can destroy the success they've achieved.

Life is never that simple because of all those connections that make us one with the Universe.

Did Meyer's success come only from her own efforts?

Entirely and only from her own efforts, and the efforts of those around her, people she knows, who helped her materialize these novels? (see the Gene Roddenberry post linked above).

Or do we need to examine a much broader cross section of reality to understand what is happening in this world and why, and therefore perhaps understand where it's all going and what it means?

Let's look at a cross section from a different angle and see what turns up.

The first novel in my key universe, Sime~Gen, "went viral" via the Star Trek fan network connected through my Kraith fanzine universe and my professional non-fiction book STAR TREK LIVES!

http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/ for Kraith for free reading.

Sime~Gen spawned about 6 different fanzine publications started by fans and contributed to by fans, discussing aspects of the Sime~Gen universe.

Most of the Sime~Gen fanzine material is posted online and one of the 'zines, Companion In Zeor, is still publishing online. A totally separate "shared universe" co-operative fiction Sime~Gen story is being created by a number of fan writers and posted online.

The master index page is
http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/

The Rimon's Library section contains most of the fiction and you'll find a separate link to the Co-operative fiction at the bottom of the master index page.

The second Sime~Gen novel, Unto Zeor, Forever, won the Galaxy Award.

For the timeline, see my biography page
http://www.simegen.com/bios/jlbio.html

During and after writing/publishing Unto Zeor, Forever, I brought Jean Lorrah onboard to write the professional novel FIRST CHANNEL in the Sime~Gen Universe. The whole concept of FIRST CHANNEL was entirely Jean's idea.

That was a major first - female-female SF collaboration. Jean had already written some really splendid fan stories which are posted on /sgfandom/ in Rimon's Library.

I don't recall exactly when, but during those initial years a manila envelope appeared in my mailbox with a return address of "Andrea Alton."

As most of you know, Marion Zimmer Bradley had become my writing mentor and really helped sell House of Zeor and Unto Zeor, Forever. She actually wrote one of the paragraphs which survived to the final draft of Unto and taught me how to "sharpen" a sentence by writing my sentence for me. (then I went back and used that technique throughout the novel)

One of the families in Bradley's Darkover series is named Alton (common enough name, but it had never turned up in my mailbox before).

I was active in Darkover fandom, and fans have a habit of taking names from the fiction they be-fan. Bradley had grown up in fandom. So had I.

I looked at the envelope, saw the name, thought it had to do with the fan organizational work I was doing for Darkover fandom (I ran "Keeper's Tower" the group that kept track of official fan groups; I was Fan Guest of Honor at the first Darkover Grand Council Meeting; I grew up on the planet Darkover and eventually sold Marion a Darkover story for an anthology).

With my mind on the Darkover fan activity and the growing Kraith fandom (55 creative artists worked on Kraith at one time or another, and the print run would sell out 1,000 copies within weeks of publication), plus the budding Sime~Gen fandom, I just stared and stared at that name, ALTON on that envelope and mentally screamed FAN HOAX.

Someone was playing a joke on me. For sure.

So I opened the envelope prepared to be the butt of a fannish joke (not the first time).

It was a Sime~Gen fan story titled Belling The Cat by "Andrea Alton."

A rewritten and lengthened version is currently posted here:
http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/cz/cz12/bellcat.html

Here's the editor's notes:
Editorial Note: The following story was originally submitted to A COMPANION IN ZEOR in 1981. After Jacqueline read it, her opinion was that it was a good basis for a professional novel. It was further developed into "ICY NAGER" which at one point had been submitted to Doubleday for publication. Because of that decision, A COMPANION IN ZEOR never printed this piece. What you are reading is the original first draft of "ICY NAGER" which has been available both as a print fanzine and on our Websites. Karen MacLeod

The first draft of the story that landed in my mailbox was PERFECTLY executed, with a firm artistic hand, with a disciplined and full-voiced stylistic cadence, with a deep full throated thematic chord and perfectly reticulated structure. It was better written than anything I could have aspired to write at that time (maybe since, too).

I loved it.

But I loved it because it was MY story.

The quality of the writing freaked me out.

It was a story I had had in my mind for well over 10 years and never told anyone about, that I could remember.

I had dreamed of being able to write and sell that story one day, if the other novels succeeded well enough. But Alton's story didn't have the Action/Adventure genre signature in the foreground as would be required to sell it commercially. It was pure Intimate Adventure.

Alton's story was more like a very well written TWILIGHT.

Alien Romance readers would love it, but there were no Alien Romance readers then, and no real "Vampire As Good Guy" novels either.

My ambition to sell Andrea Alton's Sime~Gen story was realistic since House of Zeor had been mentioned for the Hugo, and Kraith brought me in as a runner-up for the fan Fan Hugo even though the Fan Hugo was never ever awarded for fan fiction and there was a huge anti-Star Trek movement in SF fandom.

I sat there and read the original Belling The Cat story over and over, parsing every sentence, looking for a clue about who was playing a trick on me.

I tried to think who, of all the people I knew which was thousands, who could possibly have heard me mention this story idea, this plot. (every word exactly MINE) I couldn't think of anyone who might have heard me mention it who also had the skill to write like this.

Except Marion Zimmer Bradley.

Apropos of this, many years later when I was a Guest at a Star Trek convention in Great Gorge New Jersey, I met Theodore Sturgeon and told him about how I knew every scene and every plot move and Vulcan detail established in his script Amok Time (but I knew the broadcast version, not the version he wrote) before it was broadcast just from the footnote in David Gerrold's Ballantine paperback THE MAKING OF STAR TREK which noted that in the upcoming Star Trek season, Spock would go home driven by the Vulcan mating drive and the story was written by Theodore Sturgeon. That's all it took, and I KNEW.

Here's my post on Ted Sturgeon.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/theodore-sturgeon-ask-next-question.html

At the time that Andrea Alton's Belling The Cat arrived in my mailbox, I had already had the experience of KNOWING Ted Sturgeon's plot and mating drive details before seeing the episode. But I had not had the experience of telling him about it.

So I knew that I was capable of grabbing a story off the astral plane that someone was working on or planning to write. I knew what it felt like to access such an unwritten work.

This knowledge undermined my ability to simply attribute Belling The Cat to Marion Zimmer Bradley and call her up and accuse her of hoaxing me and sharing a good laugh.

The postmark on the envelope was not where Marion lived at the time, but she could have pulled off a re-mailing.

Belling The Cat had Marion's strength, but not her "style" -- it had my premise and idea, but not my style or skill level.

There was no clue of a cover letter, no note saying this was a submission to this or that S~G 'zine to indicate the author knew of Sime~Gen fandom, no real title or header on the manuscript. It was just what someone would do to play a joke on me.

In this period, I was "editing" (teaching to write) a bunch of fan writers for Kraith and also for Sime~Gen since we'd begun publishing fiction in the S~G fanzines. I knew a lot of people who would have a blast getting my goat.

And I had to answer that author.

So I wrote a very tentative, very cautious letter (yes, snailmail) kind of hinting that I'd like to know the history of this story and pen name.

Andrea Alton wrote back and said that's her real name and that she wanted to submit the story for 'zine publication.

I don't recall right now if she was a Darkover fan at that time, but she became one. She wanted to submit the story for the fanzines but was very afraid it wasn't good (!!!!) enough.

You see, it was just an idea she suddenly had, and sat down and dashed off as a story, WHOOSH like taking dictation. It was the first fiction she'd ever written.

It took quite a while to convince me of that, but it was really true. Eventually I met her. A real person, and NICE too.

Years later, she wrote and sold a truly fabulous, utterly original, completely perfectly crafted SF novel titled DEMON OF UNDOING.
http://www.sfreviews.net/demonundo.html

The company she sold it to (the high prestige, nothing-but-perfectly-crafted novels packager BAEN) published it in 1988 and immediately offered her a contract for a second book. She turned down the contract. She never sold anything else that I know of.

Eventually Demon of Undoing was one of the earliest e-books, posted online for download. That e-publisher is gone now, and I've lost touch with Andrea, though people write to me looking for her.

I was able to believe BELLING THE CAT was her first attempt at fiction and that she had never heard of my intent to write that story (which I now won't ever write because it's been written) because I knew I had KNOWN what Amok Time would be without seeing it.

Only personal experience can convince you of something this impossible.

Well, impossible in the Hellenistic view of the Universe; not in the Biblical view of the universe.

Andrea Algon wrote more Sime~Gen, and you can find all her Sime~Gen posted online in Rimon's Library.

Eventually, we were close to a chance to sell Sime~Gen novels by authors other than Jean and me. The fan novels we had published were professional quality work. They were fan novels only because they lacked backgrounding (what's a Sime; What's a Gen; What's a Channel; What's a Donor; What's the Tecton; Where did it all come from and why?) But they were all prime examples of Intimate Adventure in styles different from mine.

Andrea was one of the writers we tapped, and she turned the hero of BELLING THE CAT (nicknamed Icy Nager) into the hero of a novel titled ICY NAGER (which we couldn't sell; it's posted online too). And that novel has a fair adventure genre signature.

Now why am I telling you about Andrea Alton and Belling the Cat?

Because this is just one of many, many examples of this phenomenon.

This phenomenon (one person writing another person's mentally sketched (or obsessively dreamed) story and selling it) happens so often that Hollywood (which gets more submissions than Manhattan publishers + e-publishers combined) has a phalanx of lawyers who return submitted manuscripts "unopened" with stern notes of legal warnings.

Any writer who originates something thinks it's original because they haven't seen it anywhere else. And yes, it may never have been made visible anywhere -- but it might have been made visible (Pentacles again) somewhere the writer has never had access to.

One originator may think the other originator "stole" something, plagiarized.

Fans have accused Star Trek of "stealing" their fanzine ideas. I know that many in the Star Trek offices had read at least some Kraith. Fans see a lot of Kraith elements turning up in the films -- elements that were heretical when I first wrote them, long before anyone but Gene Roddenberry dreamed of films. I did things such as destroying the Enterprise NCC-1701, or giving Spock a sibling, or placing Spock's family high in Vulcan society.

But any good writer looking at Classic Trek would have done the same, no stealing involved.

The assumption that what you dream inside your own mind is original and belongs only to you is rooted in the Hellenistic view of the universe, the scientific view.

In the magical view of the universe, though, not only is it possible for other creators to envision or create what you have dreamed privately, it's a necessary condition for the complete description of a magical universe.

Thus, if you've internalized a magical view of the universe, you can't ever feel the urge to "covet" another's work, success, or possessions.

Look again at all the Greek Myths and you see the gods constantly attacking each other from jealousy, covetousness, or just to steal to demonstrate power. Coveting is deeply embedded in the Hellenistic philosophy, so deeply that you can't even find it stated, because it's assumed to be an element of human nature that is a reflection of the gods, immortal and unchanging.

Covetousness of one neighbor's position in life is not possible if you hold the Biblical view.

It's not "forbidden" - it's just not possible.

In my way of looking at it, that Commandment forbids the Hellenistic (or Babylonian, Ancient Egyptian etc etc) view of the universe. Why is that philosophy forbidden? Because it's not true and it doesn't work.

This overlapping creation phenomenon is only one small example of how the real world really works. We are all connected, of one piece, even in our dreams -- or perhaps especially in our dreams.

But of course, there are dozens of other explanations that don't require a Biblical philosophy; as I said above use your own data to derive your own conclusions.

The point here is the derivation methodology.

Take an explanation and interpret a fact. Take a fact and find an explanation. MAKE THEM MATCH to make your worldbuilding resonate with verisimilitude.

OK, look back on what you know of the history of technological innovation. Edison wasn't the first to make a lightbulb, and Bell wasn't the first to create a "telephone." Many patents are held by the second, or tenth, person to invent something, just as with TWILIGHT.

''''''''''

IDEAS (Wands) are "up there" somewhere, and they penetrate this plane of existence following whatever channel of least resistence they find. YOU may be standing under one of those penetration points at any time in your life. (To understand that, wrap your mind around what I've said about Tarot and Astrology - they are not two different subjects.)

Just because you "have" the idea does not necessarily mean you can manifest it (as I had been not-writing Belling The Cat).

The individual who can manifest it will have a certain kind of Natal Chart and be under certain types of transits, and have a soul that's due for whatever lesson that they would learn by manifesting that idea.

That may or may not be you, and there's nothing personal in that.

Yes, everything in art, love, and religion is personal! But that's another subject -- one centered on characterization.

IDEAS that are manifested often go nowhere commercially, as far as the world knows.

A book may "bomb" and sell only a few thousand copies (or a few hundred e-book copies). A movie may not make it past the Festivals. An invention may be a dodo before it's manufactured.

But every once in a while, the right person in the right place at the right time of their life, at the right time of the evolution of The World and maybe Humanity, will ALSO receive an IDEA just at that moment, and of their own Free Will they may choose to act on it.

BANG!!!!!

It "goes viral" because a lot of humans are harboring that idea, can "almost hear" that idea rattling around "up there" above their minds where we are all connected, all of one piece.

The public may recognize the thing as their own dream even if they've never remembered dreaming that dream.

That's what happened with TWILIGHT.

It happened with Sime~Gen too, but on a much smaller scale.

Those who have read TWILIGHT can see the hint of a similarity with Sime~Gen. If not, consider that Sime~Gen has been billed as "Vampire In Muddy Boots."

Stephanie Meyer has achieved with TWILIGHT (and sequels) what I set out to achieve with Sime~Gen (best seller to film), and she's used the same dramatic material that I was using.

For similar dialogue expository lump to TWILIGHT see the early draft of UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER posted online at
http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/surgeon/SURGEON1.html

The published version of UNTO that won the award is 5th draft.

The spookiness continues for me with the news that Stephanie Meyer's THE HOST has been optioned for film (from option to theaters is a long complex journey).

The 2008 HC/pb release of THE HOST by Stephanie Meyer.

It's unusual for an author to be allowed to use the same byline for an adult novel as for a teen novel.

THE HOST has the following premise according to Publisher's Weekly:

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In this tantalizing SF thriller, planet-hopping parasites are inserting their silvery centipede selves into human brains, curing cancer, eliminating war and turning Earth into paradise. But some people want Earth back,

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I have no way of proving the following because it's all in my mind.

Way before I started writing Sime~Gen, I developed several SF universes, all more complex and richly backgrounded than Sime~Gen.

Then I chose which one to launch my career with and discarded the others. In order to write HOUSE OF ZEOR, I had to pare the Sime~Gen background as I knew it way, WAY down to the barest hint.

One of the rejected worlds was a complex world I call the Diasite universe.

I found all the pages (hand-scribbled) ever written about the Diasites while thinking about TWILIGHT and THE HOST.

To my utter shock, none of the premise is on those pages. They're chapter-structured PLOT outlines, remarkably well done considering I didn't know then what I know now about plot outlining.

But I remember the premise, crystal clear, and recently have been noodling around with the idea of casting the Diasites into a feature film format. I keep stubbing my mental toe on the knowledge that "the world" would not accept this -- it's just too SF, even though Hal Clement did something similar in NEEDLE.

Then (just a few days ago) I discovered (via Twitter) that Meyer's THE HOST has been optioned, so I went to look up what it is about. I haven't read THE HOST, and have read only the barest sketch of the premise.

It's the Diasite universe, simplified.

And according to Publisher's Weekly on Amazon, Meyer has learned conflict and how it generates show not tell and avoids expository lumps (but who knows? I haven't read the novel yet.)

Meyer could be more successful than Jacqueline Suzanne.

If you're curious, here's part of the Diasite concept.

The Galactic civilization gives up its barricading of Earth because of an interstellar war and Earth has to become prepared to defend itself, galaxy-class weapons and all.

The prerequisite for membership in the Galactic union (whatever it may be called, you couldn't pronounce it), is that the world that wants to join must accept a colony of Diasites onto their world.

Here's the SF hitch that is more "revolting" than tentacles and that would prevent this premise from become big box office.

The Diasites are energy beings -- pure soul. (think Arisians; Hal Clement's aliens were evolved viruses)

The Diasite home planet was destroyed several revolutions of the galaxy ago.

On their home planet Diasites evolved bonded to physical beings, "hosts."

After nearly going extinct when their planet was destroyed (war with the same encroaching enemy that's "now" reappeared), the Diasites developed the ability to use any Intelligent species as Hosts.

The Diasites are very VERY peaceable beings who don't covet. (no exceptions; and yes that viciates the premise)

So the Diasites have basically created this vast galaxy spanning civilization using their species need for hosts and a trait they can give in return for bodies. They are parasites that have made themselves into symbionts.

Diasites contribute communication.

There is no scientific means of communicating across galactic distances.

But the Diasites are (this was invented before Star Trek) like cells in one brain, and they can all communicate "telepathically" with each other. Distance doesn't make a difference because Diasites don't exist in the space-time continuum, but "above" it where there is no such thing as distance. Hence they communicate instantaneously across galactic distances.

But they can't survive without HOSTS.

So it's a trade.

The member planets of the galactic union "pay" for galactic communications and trade etc. by HOSTING a colony of Diasites large enough to handle all the galactic communications for the planet. You have to HOST to join the union.

So one day (shades of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL) out of a clear blue sky, a "mothership" of Diasites appears over the U.N. Building.
And the appeal is presented to Earth -- host a colony of diasites and become well enough armed to fight off the menace coming, or don't and succumb (roll the film of conquered planets).

"Oh, sure. No problem. We'll take some of your Diasites. What do we do?"

Well, all you have to do is find (several hundred) volunteer women who will become pregnant with a Diasite, give birth in the usual way, and raise the (utterly indistinguishable from human) child to be an upstanding citizen of Earth.

That's all.

Shades of several horror genre SF stories -- but the SF premise here is that IT IS NOT HORROR. (it's like the Vampire-As-Good-Guy; it's a twist on horror, a reversal).

And yes, this bears a resemblance to "V" but was created long before that TV series.

So the first novel is about the arrival on Earth with ultimatum, the various lies and half-truths about Diasite non-physiology and lifecycle, the terrible angst of finding enough volunteers, the factioning of Earth for and against the Diasites (let's get conquered; we can make peace with those guys, but not rapists), the birth of the children, and their coming of age (entering High School).

(wrinkle - the Diasites procreating into human form never touch the women).

The second novel is from the POV of a young Diasite in High School at puberty.

The entire first generation colony of Diasites matures at about the same time because their mothers were impregnated at the exact same moment.

The Diasites send another Mother Ship to take the first human Diasites into their first reproductive cycle. (oy, the politics)

And of course, right in the middle of all this, the ENEMY arrives at Earth.

Remember, at the time I created the Diasites, and at the time I discarded them in favor of the Simes, it was basically illegal to have sex figure in an SF novel unless your name was Philip Jose Farmer. Today's SF Romance would be considered porn. (plain brown wrapper, under the counter, no book keeping, go to jail for selling it, porn)

Each Diasite novel is in a different genre, -- that's what I've done with Sime~Gen, too. The point I'm trying to make is that SF is not a genre at all, because you can write every genre in it, including Romance. Well, especially Romance.

The third Diasite novel would be the galactic war (think my Daniel R. Kerns novels, Hero and Border Dispute.)

The fourth would involve Earth's Diasites reaching out to free a conquered world and bring that world into the galactic union. (Humans are much better at freeing and bringing-in than most of the rest of the galactics at least in our spiral arm.)

Along the way you'd learn what Diasites really are (human Diasites aren't given to know this until several generations into the colony, but being human they don't want to wait to be told). You'd learn what the existence of Diasites means about the structure of the universe.

Mostly you'd learn about the human Soul and what happens when a Diasite body is conceived by a human mother without a "father."

The Diasite universe is all about religion and sex, forbidden topics in SF of that time.

None of what I've written here is in the "outlines" I found in my files.

I think Stephanie Meyer has probably already written this universe and sold it to Hollywood as THE HOST and anything I might do with the Diasites would be seen as imitating her.

Know what? I hope THE HOST really is Diasites simplified. Look at all that work I don't have to do and the world gets the benefit anyway!

REMEMBER THIS:
Even things you write that don't ever get read by anyone else, even things you think or feel that you never let anyone else see, affect the whole universe and perhaps beyond. Somewhere up there we are all connected. What one of us does in solitude enables another to do in public and neither could do anything at all without the other whether they know it or not.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://twitter.com/jlichtenberg

Near-future science fiction stories (and smoothies)

Q: What do teachers, writers, and cocktail-bar-tenders have in common?

A: They all take the best ingredients available to them, blend them, shake them up or stir them, and deliver something fresh, palatable, refreshing and stimulating.

What does that very bad Q & A (that I just made up) have to do with Near-future science fiction stories? It's a matter of inspiration. Last night, I was wondering what to write about today.

I've been meaning for the last three weeks to share some research I've been doing into an ancient religion, but the last couple of weeks have been other religions' holy days, so I haven't. Last night, I decided that I'd do something else today, too.

So, I snatched up a variety of science and science fiction periodicals, and retired to bed to metaphorically throw ideas against the wall and see what stuck. That's my "smoothie" method of conquering writers' block, and it sounds a great deal more exotic than the "potage" method of making a tasty soup out of leftovers.

I've joined the National Fantasy Fan Federation. It found me on Facebook, you can find it at http://www.n3f.org  Also at http://tightbeam.net and http://www.fandominion.com

By the way, for aspiring science fiction writers who have sold no more than two stories to professional science fiction or fantasy publications, the deadline to get your short story into the 2009 N3F Amateur Short Story Contest is December 31st.

What stuck to my wall was a comment by Jon D. Schwarz in his reviews of three books by Dan Brown which was in the Reviews section of the September issue of The National Fantasy Fan.  "The publishers call them techno-thrillers, suspense thrillers, or suspense mysteries, but science fiction fans know them for what they really are: near-future science fiction stories."

Jon D. Schwarz's remarks remind me of an analysis that I think I remember was written by Orson Scott Card in How To Write Science Fiction and Fantasy.... (only I cannot find it!). I recall being surprised and pleased at the variety of stories that Orson Scott Card suggested were science fiction, or even "science fiction romances" (with a lower case "r"): She; The Time Machine; Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea; The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen...

Jon D. Schwarz suggests that when Tom Clancy, Michael Crichton, and Dan Brown write about artificial intelligence, supercomputers, cryptography, anti-matter, spaceships and so forth, they are writing science fiction.

Now, in my opinion, that is something to think about!

FLASH FORWARD

Did you see the pilot episode of FLASH FORWARD last week? The scenes of devastation were stunning, with obviously deliberate echoes of the first few hours after the 9-11 attacks. As you’ve probably heard even if you didn’t watch the show, the premise is that everyone on Earth blacks out for a little over two minutes. During this time, they all have brief visions of events on a single day six months in the future. A little girl says she “dreamt there were no more good days,” an ominous summary of what this future looks like. I’m excited about the possibilities of this series, clearly designed (as has repeatedly been said in the media) to take the place of LOST as the mystery to follow on prime-time TV. Will FLASH FORWARD develop into an intelligent SF story or devolve—as a review on the Innsmouth Free Press (www.innsmouthfreepress.com) site predicts—into a “soap opera” with sloppy treatment of the speculative fiction aspects? The series has two potentially interesting topics to explore, (1) how people adjust to what should be a radical upheaval in their world-view, and (2) what caused the blackout and why. I hope the answer to the latter question turns out to be more interesting than it apparently is in the novel (I peeked at the Amazon.com summary); there’s hope in that respect, since one major change has already been made—in the book the flash-forward goes to twenty years in the future, not six months. As for how public agencies and individuals deal with the destructive byproducts of the blackout and the implications of the visions, the first week is too soon to tell. Will FLASH FORWARD become a true SF serial or a just suspense story with an SF MacGuffin?

Whichever way it goes, the show gives a striking illustration of one of the themes in EVERYTHING BAD IS GOOD FOR YOU, by Steven Johnson. He discusses at length how the ability to record and re-watch programs has changed the nature of television. Now that fans can analyze dialogue and dissect action scene by scene (even frame by frame if desired), TV writers can construct plots that develop over several years and plant clues that might have been missed completely in the old-fashioned era of watching a show only once (or maybe twice if it’s caught as a rerun). Viewers can tolerate—and have come to expect—complicated character and story arcs. As Johnson puts it, today’s audience has to do more “cognitive work” to absorb the entertainment offered to it. The phenomenon is a prime example of how technology contributes to shaping art.

By the way, what do you think of EASTWICK? I like the three women protagonists more than I expected, but Daryl Van Horn is still annoying. Sure, he’s dark and ravishingly handsome, but he has little else to recommend him except generosity with his wealth, which he frequently undercuts with barbs that accompany the gifts. His seduction technique comes across to me as simply arrogant, not alluring. As far as I can remember from the novel, that aspect of his character is faithful to the book, but, then, I didn’t like him in the book either. If he’s supposed to be tempting the novice witches rather than coercing them, I can’t see why they would find him attractive for longer than it takes to have a conversation with him. The mystery of his past is intriguing, but that plot thread can’t support the series over the long term, especially since the audience (unlike the characters) already knows he’s a demon. Did he bestow powers on the women or merely act as a catalyst to awaken the magic, if that? My impression is that their powers are innate, so once they learn to control their gifts, they won’t need Van Horn for anything. Well, maybe they will eventually figure that out. (And on a side issue, if the office worker is so upset by thinking the man she had a crush on is now attracted to her only because she magically compelled him to be, all she has to do is give him an order along the line of, "You don't have to be interested in me unless you really want to." How hard is that to think of?) Anyway, I won’t give up on the series yet.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt