Orson Scott Card a Mormon, Jack Campbell the Writer, and the Chief Rabbi of England all Agree

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I can't split this post in half - I tried, but the second half makes no sense without the first.
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A Chief Rabbi, Orson Scott Card a Mormon, and Jack Campbell SF-Romance Writer All Agree? ??? !!!

Yes, they agree, but I doubt they all know it or would want to know.

Way back when I was about 3 or 4 years old, I was incensed when networks pre-empted my favorite programs and replaced them with news flashes usually regarding politics and war.

I thought about that very hard. It is hard to think when you're that young and don't have any experience to think with, but I came to a conclusion that I stand by to this day, "Fiction - i.e. story - is more important than war or politics."

What does that mean? It means simply that what makes a difference to you in how you live your life, what you decide to do, to be and to become is tied more closely to fiction than it is to current or historical events.

What is important in life (i.e. Romance, Love, Bonding, Compassion, Sharing, Healing, Faith, children, grandchildren, peace, etc.) is inherent in fiction (even fiction about war) but is not present in news stories about current conflicts in war and politics.

You learn to be who you truly are in your fiction, your inner story, your "his"tory, which sums up to a big component of your Identity.

From the vast outpouring of fiction about TV shows on outlets like fanfiction.net we see clearly that fiction cuts to the quick, to the roots of the Soul.

See my blog post on a writing lesson derived from a bit of fan fiction about the TV show White Collar, illustrating how to transform a "tell" passage into a "show" passage in fiction, so the fiction doesn't remain totally internal to yourself, but can "speak" to others.

That White Collar post is http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com posted May 4th, 2010.

The energy you see pouring out of fanfiction.net is an exchange of ideas, of theories, of passions.

The passions of one writer ignite the passions of another. Yes, people write fan fiction that makes fans of the TV show out of folks who have never watched that TV show (so they watch it streaming or buy the DVD to catch up).

Now go to a political site with news stories and read the comments on the stories. You see a totally different sort of dialogue. Each poster seems to be yelling and screaming (or being very formal and officious) while expressing their own opinion. Those who agree with each other inflame each other's passions on the topic. Those who disagree just loudly and emphatically disagree, inflaming their opposition's passions. But the passion tapped into is rage, hate, rejection, self-righteousness, or the acceptance of being a member of a powerful gang that can beat down all opposition.

I've seen some exchanges on news posting comments where a person drops a URL and another person reads it and says "thank you, that changed my mind on this topic" to the one who dropped the URL.

I've seen that, but it's very rare.

For the most part, people just express their opinions and call those who disagree names. They aren't engaging in a dialogue, sharing a passion and changing minds by providing insights the way fanfic community does.

Such news posts draw comments that are all "tell" and no "show" -- and because the comments are "tell" they don't change anyone's mind. They don't change minds because they're not part of the story. Story is always SHOW DON'T TELL.

"Show" does change minds.

Stories change minds, and even hearts. Stories form opinions, not just express them.

Remember, one of the objectives in my posts on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com
is to discover how to change the public mind on the subject of Romance in general and SF-Romance in particular.

Changing minds is a very dangerous thing to set out to do. You really don't want to implant your ideas, values or attitudes into someone else's mind where they are not native. That would not help them.

You don't want to use any power of yours to override or overshadow the free will choices of another person. Ever. No matter how much your own interests are at stake, no matter how much you stand to lose by their misbehaviors, you never, ever, use expertise, authority, knowledge, or any other power to control or even limit another person's available options. Even if it's for the other person's own good, it's still power abuse.

You only want to offer people more choices from which their free will can select what they wish -- NOT what you wish.

You want to open doors, provide glimpses of new vistas.

OK, "criminals" - that's another matter. The insane - another matter. Each is a problem in its own right. Our current culture is not handling those matters very well yet, but we're a work in progress.

Being forced into jail, hospitals, rehab, is painful, but ultimately the best way we have of opening new opportunities for such people. That's not the sort of person, though, that I'm talking about here. They don't form, shape and energize the main culture's over-arching story.

But in that mainstream of our culture(s), in the center of our river of culture, we are developing so many choices, ever more choices to make every day, that we are overloading the basic human nervous system's ability to make choices.

If a person becomes surrounded by more open doors than they are prepared to deal with, they may become confused and that could be worse than simply being wrong about something. So more choices is not always a benefit - and it's not your place to judge how many choices another should or shouldn't have.

The only way I know of to provide others with a plethora of choices but leave it up to them to decide how many choices to become aware of is to "show" don't "tell."

Really, two people reading the same book will take away two totally different descriptions of that book because each chooses to see different open doors and ignore other open doors as if they aren't even there.

When you "tell" - you hammer your idea into another's mind whether they're ready for it or not.

When you "show" - you invite only those who are ready, to come play in your back yard with your toys, your ideas, your concepts, your passions.

A really good novel (or novel series) invites reader participation in exploring beyond those open doors.

One such series out there stumping for SF-Romance while garbing itself in the guise of plain old Space Opera War Stories is Jack Campbell's THE LOST FLEET series. He's up to #7, THE LOST FLEET: VICTORIOUS

"Victorious" is the name of a ship in the Fleet of one of the interstellar combines engaged in this huge galactic war.

Two Human interstellar governments (each controlling dozens of star systems) are the unknowing victims of an alien species playing "let's you and him fight."

So the war which has been going on for 100 years is based on a trick.

John Geary, our Hero, was in a space battle at the beginning of the war, got stuck in an escape pod in cold sleep for a century, was rescued in book I of this series and catapulted into command of the Fleet when the old commander was ambushed and killed. Now, 7 books later, he has returned The Lost Fleet to it's home base (so it's not technically lost anymore), and set out again to end the war, penetrating deep into "enemy" territory to end the war.

Meanwhile, he's fallen in love with the Captain of his flagship -- they both know they're both in love, but flat refuse to acknowledge it because of chain of command complications -- and Geary is also in lust with a married woman who is a Politician, Co-President of his Alliance.

The story of the politician's husband and Geary's brother, both captives of "the enemy," is a complication worthy of any Romance genre time travel novel.

Jack Campbell, by showing not telling the place of Relationship and Love in the affairs of humankind, in the affairs of war and politics, is making huge inroads into the broader market for a Romance, and the issues of Romance most dear to our hearts.

The Lost Fleet is set in space, in a complex galactic war, but, just like Star Trek, it is about here and now, and life in our crazy world.

This series addresses the issues at the core of the Romance Genre, and the problems created by the modern "Sexual Harassment" laws. It's about Relationship between Equals, and that theme plays out on the personal level and on the interstellar political level.

On the other hand, as Linnea Sinclair pointed out, an action SF-Romance story has a serious problem with the balance between the progress of the relationship (which is the Romance plot) and the progress of the action-conflict which is, in this case, the War plot.

In The Lost Fleet series, the actual science takes place "off-stage" - experts in various parts of the fleet, geeks in closet-sized labs, discover and master new vistas of science that is the foundation of new technologies, and all that advancement affects the politics and the available offensive and defensive armament, thus the tactics and even strategies.

It's masterful worldbuilding, and tight writing that leaps over many of the scenes that would occupy entire novels in other genres.

For example, Geary is given a promotion at a debriefing directly to the highest ranking elected officials (not the equivalent of the Pentagon chiefs, but the equivalent of Congress, not the White House).

At this briefing, it is decided to promote him from Captain to Admiral of the Fleet (not just Admiral, skipping a lot of ranks, but Admiral of Admirals - Fleet Admiral). This rank has never in history been conferred (like Five Star General in WWII). But just by convenient happenstance, the leader of the politicians happens to have the new insignia in his pocket!

All 7 novels so far are riddled with major skips like this. Although the space battles happen with enough back-and-forth between opposing space fleets, and Geary has enough setbacks to show his victories aren't easy, he always wins. That makes it all seem just too hokey, too easy, to corny for a 7 book novel series.

But that's Jack Campbell's solution to the problem of that balance between the relationship-politics-people story and the action-plot. Just SKIP some stuff, and there's enough room for both. So these aren't "perfect" books - but they are a refreshingly different read, and as such raise some interesting issues to think about.

The Lost Fleet series is Art. And it is about the messy turbulence in our world created by a massive change in our culture's "Story."

What do I mean by "our Story?"

Orson Scott Card explains the narrative, the story, of a prevailing culture and pinpoints where we entered the whirling change in this culture that's resulting in a change in our narrative we haven't actually taken notice of.

Here is an excerpt from a speech Orson Scott Card gave before a Mormon group -- it's thus slanted, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater as you read. There are ideas here and a challenge.

http://www.meridianmagazine.com/ideas/100426dismantling.html

Storytelling is the essence of a culture's lifeblood.

Orson Scott Card says the inflection point of change in our world's culture began in the 1960's and hit hard in the 1970's. That seems valid to me, but keep in mind I'm not talking about our "reality" here - I'm talking about a principle behind that reality, the culture's narrative and what that implies about the role of fiction in life.

As Orson Scott Card points out, what has not happened (yet) is a public evaluation of the results of that change that started in the 1960's (flowerchildren) and 1970's (women's lib).

We bemoan a lot of what seems to me to be the direct results of the changes -- disintegrating family, shift in the way employees are treated as temporary, replaceable or self-employed, and a difference in what education is (vocational training only, as opposed to "a Classical Education" teaching how to think not what to think)

And more apparent to me every day is the fragmentation of fiction-audiences (TV, film, books (more titles, fewer readers per title), games (was only D&D, now thousands).

An obvious result of the audience fragmentation is that we haven't got any fictional language in common in which to communicate about intangibles like values.

Many people who see these trends don't see them as consequences of a shift in our national narrative, our STORY, the way Orson Scott Card does.

But if you look closely, and evaluate what we've shucked off against what we've gained, you might begin to see the opening where Romance and especially SF-Romance, seems to fit like the right key in a lock.

Maybe the name of what we've lost is RELATIONSHIP, bonding. Maybe the solution is narrative about how to form bonds strong enough to last a lifetime.

Consider that the fragmentation I've described here might ignite xenophobia among many groups who would then, in fear, strike for domination over other groups.

Or maybe that's not what's actually happening? Orson Scott Card looks at the sweep of history to find how what was good disintegrated into something not so good. But maybe it's really an improvement?

I've written in this blog about the impact of Web 2.0 on fiction and politics as well as the business model of writers. In general, I'm wildly in favor of our new world of connectivity.

Despite where I personally stand at this moment in time, it's an open question for me. Is the change happening now going in a "good" direction -- or a "bad" direction? Is it change itself that makes me uncomfortable? Or is it the valuable elements we've lost (spelling for one thing). Or is the apparent destination of this change disquieting?

How do you make that value judgment?

Card suggests testing the direction of change against the ultimate goal for any culture - self-perpetuation. Can you transmit living values to the children? And they to theirs? Does this culture "time-bind" up and down as well as sideways across probability lines (or into alternate universes).

Is that test of the direction of change valid?

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of England, offers another way to test the product of the changes made in the 1960's and 1970's.

Before he was a Rabbi, he got a Ph.D.in Philosophy and was headed for a teaching career in that arcane field. So when he speaks of Hellenistic philosophy, he knows what he's talking about.

His Lecture is a huge long article, longer than my blog posts even!

Rabbi Sacks has done this 6 part Lecture Series on "Faith" - and the item I'm focusing on is Lecture #2 in the series.

Lecture #1 is
http://www.chiefrabbi.org/ReadArtical.aspx?id=451

He calls this lecture series a journey of Ideas. SF is the Literature of Ideas.

Here is Lecture #2 in this series:

http://www.chiefrabbi.org/ReadArtical.aspx?id=1607

#2 is titled:
Faith Lectures: Judaism, Justice and Tragedy - Confronting the problem of evil

At this writing, I find that the Lecture #2 is truncated about in the middle. Perhaps they will fix that by the time you read this. I have the whole text in print.

Here's a quote from #2 as Rabbi Sacks recaps Lecture #1 in the series:

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Friends, I was trying to explain in my first lecture that Judaism, as you will understand from that story, is a religion of multiple perspectives, of many ways of looking at the truth. Some of you who followed that lecture - did any of you follow that lecture? [Laughter]. It was a bit tough going but some of you followed that lecture and understood absolutely correctly that it was nothing whatsoever with the title of that lecture which was "Faith". Listen, I'm sorry. What can I do? The truth is: I will come to faith, I promise you, probably in the third lecture, possibly in the last. One way or another, we'll get there. But first of all I really have to take you with me on a journey to see Judaism as different, as less familiar, as more radical than we ever imagined. If we can do that, we will be able to take things we have known about for ages and see in them something new. We will undergo what I call a 'paradigm shift'.

My thesis in the first lecture, the story so far for those of you who missed it, as far as I can summarise it, is this: that Judaism as I portrayed it was and is a radical alternative not only to the ancient world of myth but to the central paradigm of western civilisation, namely to Greek thought whose characteristic mode is philosophy, at least Platonic, and Cartesian philosophy, and whose master discipline is logic. As I said, the unspoken assumptions of western thought - and of course I am being crude here but you don't want a lecture with footnotes as well - are the following:

That knowledge is cognitive.

The metaphor of cognition is sight. It's a visual matter; truth is something we see. ...
--------END QUOTE-------

What have I been TELLING you in all my posts on screenwriting? Story in pictures. Show don't tell. The metaphor of cognition is sight. hmmm.

After I read that quotation above, I had to read the whole Lecture because, as you know if you've read my published book on Tarot (NEVER CROSS A PALM WITH SILVER), the trick to understanding Tarot is understanding how it's basis (Kabbalah) is so absolutely different from our ambient USA culture which is so thoroughly Hellenistic in all unconscious assumptions.

Took me about three hours to read just Lecture #2, every word, slowly and carefully. I had to set aside reading THE LOST FLEET: VICTORIOUS to get that read in. Then I just had to find it online so you could read it too!

The title of the Lecture doesn't make it sound like it has anything to do with Romance. But it does have to do with the story, the narrative, we share as a culture - not just Jewish culture, but the whole of the world that was involved in World War II. And some of the best Romance I've ever seen has been WWII films!

A good Romance is always fraught with tragedy. Justice in Romance means that the destined couple end up together - after it all. It's Happily Ever After, not Happily In The Beginning. Romance is about overcoming the obstacles to happiness. (News stories are not about happiness, nor about Events that are merely obstacles to happiness.)

Tragedy is rampant in our world today, separating lovers and interfering with family life. That's part of our narrative.

Is Justice just as rampant? And if so, is that a good thing? Is there such a thing as Justice run wild? Can "Justice" turn to evil in the wrong hands?

The 7 novels in The Lost Fleet series do address this problem via the character of the fleet commander, Gear, and his two loves.

Another long series of novels that discusses how Values shape and armor Character is the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher, which I rave about periodically here.

Most of the Urban Fantasy you see these days is based on some elaborate worldbuilding to create a backdrop for a battle between Good and Evil, with the result being a draw, or leaving Evil a bit ahead.

The biggest box office films are Good vs. Evil, clear cut and stark.

So reading up on the philosophy behind our culture's angst over "Good" vs. "Evil" is part of the 7 Endeavors I discussed as training for a writer in these posts:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/04/7-pursuits-to-teach-yourself-writing.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/04/7-pursuits-to-teach-yourself-writing_27.html

Fiction, I contest, is more important than reality because fiction conveys our cultural narrative, our story. I figured that out when I was four years old, so don't take it as defense of taking up the trade of writing. I had no idea I could or would be a professional writer back then. I didn't know there was such a thing as a "profession."

What so much of our fiction is conveying now is very different from what our fiction written before WWII conveyed.

World War II made "Evil" a newspaper headline. A generation grew up in a world traumatized by a battle against "Evil." (BTW all 3 sides saw the other 2 sides as Evil, just as Terrorists are fighting the insidious Evil of modern culture.)

Now the children of WWII veterans seem to be stuck in a fascination with that battle, replaying it in every fantasy universe in every medium that can carry fiction.

That's what's so interesting about THE LOST FLEET series. The battles there are not against "Evil" at all, just against greed, revenge, invaders, fear, misplaced courage, and an assortment of human motives, and maybe eventually non-human ideas of proprietary rights. There's nothing clear cut about the motives or the stakes in this galactic war.

And The Lost Fleet is a New York Times best seller. There may be something going on here that we need to pay attention to.

Rabbi Sacks talks about the problem of "Evil" - that if G-d is Good, and if G-d exists then how can Evil exist?

Here's another quote from Lecture #2
-------QUOTE--------
...see if we can understand in a new way that most difficult of all problems in religious thought, perhaps in human thought as a totality, namely the problem of evil or the problem of injustice, the thing which we describe when we talk about 'when bad things happen to good people' or what the rabbis said in terms of tzadik vera lo, which is the rabbinic equivalent.

That problem is so deep that it has given rise to a whole theological discipline, primarily a Christian one, a very distinguished discipline. And I please pray of you, all of you, that whenever I contrast Judaism and something else, I am never trying to denigrate that something else. I really mean that. To be a Jew is to make space for 'otherness'. If I were to sum up the whole of these six lectures, it would be in that phrase: "To be a Jew is to make space for otherness". But that means we do our thing and we respect those who do other things. Therefore, Christianity developed a whole theological discipline which so too did the Jewish philosophers of the Middle Ages which is called theodicy. It is the whole attempt to understand how if God exists evil exists.

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See? To understand what Orson Scott Card talked about as a change in our culture in the 1960's and 1970's, you need to go all the way back to the Middle Ages, before the Mormon's existed as such.

You may also want to use Astrology to trace the effects of Pluto through the 1960's and '70's so read this:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/11/astrology-just-for-writers-part-6.html

"Theodicy" then is what all of modern Urban Fantasy seems to be about. That encompasses a lot of TV shows, and many movies. Action movies and action-romance too, likes to grab that one thing, Good vs. Evil.

This endless outpouring of novels about Good vs. Evil, and about how you survive in a world where both operate, may be due to the concept that the question can not be resolved, but it must be!

Here's another quote from Lecture #2

--------QUOTE---------
Now if that is so, if my interpretation is right, then Judaism begins not in the conventional place where faith is thought to begin, namely in wonder that the world is. Judaism begins in the opposite, in the protest against a world that is not as it ought to be. At the very heart of reality, by which I mean reality as we see it, from our point of view, there is a contradiction between order and chaos: the order of creation and the chaos we make.

Now the question is: how do we resolve that contradiction? And the answer is that that contradiction ..., between the world that is and the world that ought to be, cannot be resolved at the level of thought. It doesn't exist! You cannot resolve it! Logically, philosophically, in terms of theology or theodicy, you cannot do it! The only way you can resolve that tension is by action; by making the world better than it is.

.... When things are as they ought to be, ....- then we have resolved the tension. Then we have reached our destination. But that is not yet. It was not yet for Abraham and it is not yet for us. And from this initial contradiction, from this cognitive dissonance, are born the following four fundamental features of Judaism.
---------END QUOTE-----

WHEW! Is that, or is it not, an accurate description of the entire Romance genre with the emphasis on the HEA ending? What an unexpected place to find such a statement of the objective of the Romance genre, and the nature of the spiritual exercise of reading Romance!

Soul mates finding and bonding to each other changes the world, relieves that tension between Good and Evil by action, by changing the world, the whole world and all it's potential future paths.

The entire Lecture #2 really is needed to put this all into context. But the full text I have in a printed book is not on this website. Maybe it will be by the time you read this.

Making your own world "as it ought to be" is the essence of Romance.

Falling in love is the glimpse of that world of "ought" - when the Honeymoon is over, the struggle to recreate what "ought" to be in the cold light of reality begins. Some couples win that struggle. Others don't make it. Both kinds of couples change the world.

There is one philosophy that assumes it is a given that we will succeed in tinkering the world up to what it "ought" to be.

There are others that assume we will fail.

Is the pivot point of WWII and the subsequent 60's and 70's generational change we have seen a pivot from a vision of "we will succeed" to "it isn't possible to overcome Evil"?

That's the Horror genre premise - that Evil must exist so that Good can exist, and the most the Hero can achieve is to stuff Evil into a sarcophagus and bury it a mile deep behind sigils and signs.

The most Good can achieve against Evil is a draw.

Orson Scott Card is asking if our narrative has shifted from "we will prevail" (which won WWII), to one of "give up; it's a draw" or maybe to one of "give up; it's impossible."

Jack Campbell is answering, "Hell no! We're gonna win this sucker, and then we'll settle your hash, you meddling aliens."

What is the narrative we are passing on to our children? To what great heights will they aspire because of our story?

Rabbi Sacks has an answer to that in a unique analysis of the Passover story - not as about Passover itself, but about NARRATIVE, about story as a necessity for transmitting a culture.

http://www.chiefrabbi.org/ReadArtical.aspx?id=1623

The title of the piece says it all:

Never underestimate the power of a story to enlarge the moral imagination of a child.

It talks about Africa, Haiti's earthquake, and Rwanda.

Read that very short piece and ask yourself what does our modern cultural narrative spur our children to do?

What do you have to say, to contribute, to our modern cultural narrative? Show don't tell.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

It's all a matter of perspective (Guest post by K S Augustin)

It's all a matter of perspective.

This is an utterly true story, so please bear with me.

My husband, J, is Polish and he's currently working in Singapore. He occasionally runs into another Pole in the same building where he works. Let's call him Janek. Janek is a physicist. Of course, when you meet compatriots in a foreign country, you tend to get chummier than you perhaps would under normal circumstances. This one day, for reasons that elude J's recollection, the two men began talking about high school and their career choices.

“I had a tough time,” Janek boomed. “It was a challenge becoming a physicist. I was enrolled in the technical high school in Wroclaw (*) and, of course, the time came for me to decide what career I was going to pursue at University.”

(*) In Poland a few decades ago, the high schools were streamed. The one Janek attended was for students with aptitude in hard sciences. Those who leant more to the Arts side of the fence went to a  high school specialising in the social sciences or literature, and so on. Also, “Wroclaw” is pronounced “Vrots-wahv”.

“When I told my Physics professor that I wanted to be a physicist, she hit the roof! She told me to stay back after class so we could discuss it. When we were alone, she looked at me and said: 'Janek, why do you want to be a physicist? Physics is for girls!'”

I'll wait here and give you time to pull yourself back into your chairs.

“Why don't you study something more masculine? Like (Polish) literature!”

“It's true,” my husband insisted when I burst out laughing at his anecdote. “Like Janek, all my Physics professors were women as well. It was the same in Mathematics. In my entire school, we only had one male Maths teacher, and he was quite useless. The one time he tried to prove a theorem to us, he got into such difficulties that one of the other professors made up a phone call to get him out of the classroom so he wouldn't end up embarrassing himself. We all knew that if we had a sticky problem to solve, we'd go to a female professor.”

Let me finish Janek's story. It got so bad for the poor guy that even his language teacher called his parents to ask them if they knew he was considering physics for a career instead of literature! But, eventually, Janek got his way and now he sits in Singapore and discusses Minkowski (*) with J over a local coffee.

(*) Minkowski came up with a mathematical foundation for describing non-Euclidean space.

There are a couple of points I'd like to make here. Number one is that, if you met Janek in Singapore, and found out he was a physicist, you would probably nod your head and think “of course, a Polish physicist. That sounds natural.” But what you wouldn't know is that, in fact, it was the most unnatural of choices. So we should all be aware of what conclusions we jump to.

Second, just because it works one way in your environment, never assume it works the same way in others.

And third, if that's how topsy-turvy things can get on Earth, can you imagine what it's like in the rest of the galaxy?

And that is why I love writing science-fiction!


KS Augustin has a hard sf romance (“In Enemy Hands”) due for release on 7 June from Carina Press. Her website is at http://www.ksaugustin.com, her blog is at http://blog.ksaugustin.com and you can find her on Facebook and Twitter under “ksaugustin”. Why not stop and say hi?

COMPETITION: I'm giving away two copies of IN ENEMY HANDS at my blog, Fusion Despatches [http://blog.ksaugustin.com]. To be in the draw, stop by and comment at the Competition post, telling me at which blog you read about my book. You have till 30 June!

Romance Is Good for You

Last week, one of our local community freebee magazines contained an article about the importance of relationships, especially good marriages, to personal well-being, which seems to be a popular topic in the media in recent years.

It's been known for a while that fulfilling relationships promote good health. Married people have longer lives and less illness and depression than unattached people, and partnered folks enjoy positive effects on blood pressure, susceptibility to pain, and many other factors. Here's one article on that topic:

Health Benefits of Relationships

Sex has healing powers, too. All those secretions such as endorphins and oxytocin do great things for physical as well as mental health. Not to mention the aerobic exercise:

Health Benefits of Sex

Relationships are vitally important to our welfare. Love is not just a frill. Romance novels deal with one of the most important facets of human life. So why do they get no respect, even nowadays when most genre fiction is taken more seriously than it used to be?

The obvious answer—that romance falls under the trivialized category of "women's" fiction—raises the further question of when and why such a central issue as the forming of intimate relationships became relegated to the feminine sphere, beneath the notice of men aside from its relevance to family dynasties and business alliances? Because women usually have a deeper, more hands-on involvement than men in the care of children, so by extension anything focused inwardly on the family rather than outwardly on commerce, politics, war, etc. (you know, the "important" stuff) has been left to the female half of the population?

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

The Hurt Locker, Indie Films, Financing TV Part II

I've cut this long post into two parts again as an experiment. Part I was posted Tuesday, May 11, 2010 here.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/05/hurt-locker-indie-films-financing-tv.html

Now for Part II.
-----------
Introduction
The topic here is "If you want to understand the world, follow the money." And by following the business model and financing sources for the fiction delivery system, we might understand things well enough to boost the Alien Romance field's respectability. So here is Part I, a history lesson in financing fiction, followed by Part II, how that historical root has shaped what's happening now and reveals what might happen next. If you anticipate what's going to happen next, you can turn a profit on it.
---------

Part II

Today, a similar revolution is going on in film to what has happened in SF/F book publishing under the pressure from an exploding fanfic marketplace (and other sorts of pressure we're not talking about this time).

As fanzines were originally produced and distributed at a huge loss to the publishers, eventually publishers learned the business of publishing applied to fanzines as well. And the best fanzines became break-even.

That's right. They weren't allowed to make a profit, but they could break-even, that is cover the expenses with the price of the 'zine. If it were legal, they soon saw, they could indeed make a profit.

The fiction delivery system I've been talking about in these posts is a business model, and it can operate at a profit - if it's legal.

Hence, the pressure on the copyright system that makes it illegal to turn a profit on material copyrighted by others unless you pay the owner. Society is looking for a new model for the ownership of art by its creator.

The Indie Film community is meanwhile, tapping into Indie Writers, first-time screenwriters selling their first script. It's become a voracious market for scripts that could be filmed for way under a million dollars.

Use the LOOK INSIDE feature on Amazon to read the intro to the screenplay of THE HURT LOCKER.

http://www.amazon.com/Hurt-Locker-Shooting-Script-Newmarket/dp/1557049092/rereadablebooksr/

I have the book itself (it's good) and the end-notes or Production Notes at the end tell the story of how this film was funded.

As Indie film makers climb the ladder, they are able to attract investors and increase budgets to where those "fanzine" type flaws can be avoided. It's all about budget.

Really study how THE HURT LOCKER was created, and you'll see something very important is happening.

Now think about this. TV shows (long a product only of big studios) are now searching for and finding "independent financing."

Read this article in Daily Variety:

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118016724.html?categoryid=1238&cs=1&query=%22by+Michael+Schneider%22+%2B+Leverage

The TV Show Leverage is looking to leverage some financing from a new source. Remember the original Star Trek was canceled because of low Nielsen Ratings (because there were no ratings boxes on College Dorm TV's), and Nielsen Ratings exist for the sole purpose of determining the sale price of commercial time (eyeballs = revenue). If you don't have at least 3 seasons of shows, you can't syndicate and monetize the investment in the first 2 seasons.

Thus the 3rd season of 16 shows of LEVERAGE are key to monetizing the investment.

In the early 1970's, Star Trek fen hatched the idea that we should buy stock in Paramount and NBC and force them to put Star Trek back on the air.  Good idea, before it's time.  Shareholders had no say over programming.

If this business model idea had existed then, Roddenberry would have had a ready source of all the cash needed to create a 4th and 5th Season of the original show, and probably most of the derivatives and the movies.  Fans were willing (and increasingly able) to raise that kind of money as many went on to very successful careers after college.

Remember always -- it's a business model. Invest and reap more than you invested. That's the only criterion of any interest, and the only thing that determines whether you the audience will have access to any bit of fiction.

EXCEPT -- now we have self-publishing and YouTube. Which are the "fanzines" of yesteryear manifesting in the Web-hubbed world.

Yes, the business model of fanzines was - pay nobody, throw your hobby-money into a fun project - the only profit is a boost to your ego (egoboo another coinage of fandom).

Have you seen the Star Trek Episode WORLD ENOUGH AND TIME -- made with unpaid actors, not paying for the script, out-of-pocket investment.

http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/weat_gateway.html

It's a TV Show Episode fanzine - and it's fabulous Indie Production.

Marc Zicree engineering and produced WORLD ENOUGH AND TIME with all legal permissions. And it's been hugely successful.

Here's one more datapoint to consider.

Wired Magazine featured in March 2010 an article on using Twitter to transfer money person to person -- better and faster than PayPal.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_futureofmoney

The article talks about uninventing "money" as something printed on paper or coined from something of value. Whole new concept of making a business model work. And the concept arises from a new style of thinking, a new internal or mental model of the universe.

This kind of thinking is native to the Web 2.0+ generation.

But it is transforming the business model of the Fiction Delivery System I've been talking about.

I've been following several people on Twitter who are soliciting investors in Indie films.

Yes, for $25 or $50 you can "own" a fraction of a film - which like HURT LOCKER might win an Academy Award or perhaps a lesser accolade, and become worth money. Or it might be a paradigm transforming addition to this new world. There are lots of different sorts of "deals" out there for investing in Indie Films.

Here's one from Twitter:
@FilmCourageWe are 74% Funded, Over $11,000 raised. $3855 left to go & 17 hours left.... http://bit.ly/aVDeQP

And another one from twitter (@syfy is the official syfy channel tweeter)

Syfy Q) @dspringfield Would Syfy ever consider a cost sharing arrangement like Friday Night Lights on DirecTV? A) We'd probably consider it.

And I'm in some Film groups on Twitter where there's a lot of funding activity going on. Innovation in funding procedures will drive innovation in the kinds of fiction that can be delivered to different fractional audiences -- and then those little audiences grow and change the whole world.

The overall thrust of this series of posts on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com is all about presenting Alien and SF/Paranormal Romance to the general audience in such a way as to reveal to them why this kind of story deserves attention and ultimately respect. The boring business of tracing how funding sources changes the whole business model is just one tiny part of this investigation.

So here's another illustration of the results of this kind of thinking, not so much focused on entertainment as on the kind of tech innovation that is pushing the world of entertainment financing (and thus ownership issues such as copyright) in new directions:

An article in Businessweek titled "And Google Begat..." shows how the entrepreneurial training employees at Google absorb even non-verbally is driving a new wave of tech innovation:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_10/b4169039637367.htm

These datapoints are important not only because of their content, but also because of where I found them.

As Star Trek fanfic began slowly to be mentioned in major media, so also these innovative ways of financing the fiction delivery system are surfacing first here-and-there, and now in the hugely influential national media.

The source of financing for the endeavor actually shapes the endeavor, more even than the objective or driving ambition to communicate.

Financing and its sources belong to the Tarot Suit of Pentacles, the World of manifestation. Here is a list of the 10 posts on the Suit of Pentacles I've done on this blog.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_23.html

Money is not the root of all evil, but rather the manifestation of whatever (good or bad) has been conceptualized "above" that level.

There is a dynamic tension in play between the established system of profiting from large audiences which is explained here in a Review of a book about the film industry and its business model (you probably should read the book; but I haven't yet):

http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/04/20/noted-journalist-jay-epstein-explains-why-movies-suck/?icid=main|aim|dl9|link4|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.walletpop.com%2Fblog%2F2010%2F04%2F20%2Fnoted-journalist-jay-epstein-explains-why-movies-suck%2F

and the system profiting from do-it-yourself entertainment (Indie Films, YouTube, Self-publishing, and now TV Series independently funded), which is discussed further down in the Review.

The walletpop.com review says:
-------
Independent film financing has collapsed. Studios rarely make money on a film. Although the industry may not be putting out films to your taste, you're still paying tax dollars to support them. And Wal-Mart is one reason skin is so rare in major studio releases.
--------------

And a little further down in the article (which you really should read in whole) it says:
---------
What happened to sex?
There was a time when nudity was almost obligatory in major films. Now, even James Bond's arm candy is modestly attired, and Epstein points out that, of the top 25 highest grossing films since 2000, none have had any sex-related nudity.
There are two reasons for this, according to Epstein.
------------

Remember earlier here I pointed out how the sex scene has replaced the action scene in SF/F - especially kickbutt heroine urban fantasy. And have you looked at Romance covers as a group lately? Two figures, suggestively intertwined -- the artists must be horrendously bored by that order from editors.

But sexuality has disappeared from the big screen - (still a lot of hot stuff on TV, but that may change soon too).

On the third hand, read this article:

'Harry Potter' Star Says Filming a Sex Scene is Hard, Watching It With Parents is Harder

http://www.popeater.com/2010/04/22/rupert-grint-cherrybomb-sex-scene/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+aol%2Fmovies%2Ftop+%28Movie+News%29

Lesson for the writer - if you want a big audience, delete all the sex scenes.

Remember the writing lesson where you are required to write 10 pages, then the instructor tells you to go over it and delete every single adjective and adverb, and you absolutely die over that drill?

Well, do the same thing with your sex scenes. Delete them all and see if you still have a story in there somewhere. See what that does to the story you are telling. Maybe you have a major motion picture on your hands. Or an Indie.

I have no reason to suspect that what this review on walletpop.com says about Indie Film financing or the 10 items in the big screen blockbuster formula is not currently true. But to the kind of thinkers the Wired article referenced above talks about, that is an opportunity not an obstacle.

I recall my grandparents remembering the days before radio when families would gather in the living room in the evening and play piano, violin, and sing-along, entertaining themselves.

Perhaps we're headed back to that life rhythm on a new arc. Families sitting around concocting a YouTube video; what an image.

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

Click fraud: The adword you should never use

Do you think the ebook pirates are sticking it to the man? You betcha.

Here's what at least one ebook pirate site is requesting:

"Help the site grow, Click a Banner Ad (at the top or bottom of site) once a day, or click this link to donate."

 It makes sense, doesn't it? If thousands of people are willing to "steal" books, they probably aren't above click fraud.

So, guess what? Not only is Penguin books (among others) being ripped off because the pirates are "sharing" ebooks that at least some of them (judging by some of the comments posted on pirate forums) honestly would have purchased, now it is the victim of click fraud on the same sites that "share" Penguin authors' books.

How does this happen?

I don't believe for a moment that Penguin, Xlibris, Tate, Kobe and others would deliberately pay good money to undermine their own business.

I suspect that they've got some kind of automated advertisement placement, and if they are spending their advertising dollars asking pirates to buy ebooks on a site that makes the idea of paying for ebooks ridiculous... they must be using adwords.

Maybe "ebook", "e-book", "eBook"...  You think?

We ought to have a publishing wide list of words NOT to pay to use. We ought to check out tag clouds (I'm not sure if they are available) on pirate sites, to see which words the search bots are most likely to link with sites where dishonest people go to read free ebooks and share.

What do you think Penguin pays per click? .20 cents? .50?  $2.75 for popular words?
What is that going to cost the publishers who can afford to advertise if several thousand happy and dutiful pirates click their banners (top and bottom) once a day?

I don't say "don't advertise using the word 'ebook'. Obviously not. I say, don't pay per click. At least starve the pirate sites of funds from clicking on advertisements.


Other stuff.

Once upon a time, I wanted a particular view of Stonehenge for a projected cover for one of my alien romance books. That's how I made the acquaintance of Scott Merrill.

We renewed our acquaintanceship recently, when Scott recorded Mating Net as an audio book. This is the first chapter, and I commissioned the talented Marianne Arkins to record a video track to go with it.




If you like the sound of Scott's voice, you might consider his talents for a voice over on your own 2 minute book video. I'm sponsoring an auction item in Brenda Novak's annual fundraiser for her Diabetes charity. Scott will record a 2 minute excerpt or blurb as long as the winning bidder provides the text.
Marianne will purchase photographs, and create a video. I will pay for it. (Up to an estimated $500 value.)

http://brendanovak.auctionanything.com/Bidding.taf?_function=detail&Auction_uid1=1773459

The auction runs through May. If you don't want to bid for a book promotional piece, check out the myriad other auction items.

Primate Relations

The prevailing scientific consensus about the relationship between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals has been reversed, as reported in this article:

Humans Did Indeed Mate with Neanderthals

I've always been disappointed by articles and TV programs in which evolutionary anthropologists expressed near-certainty that no Neanderthal DNA had crept into the human genome. Of course, that didn't necessarily mean occasional matings that left no permanent trace never occurred, but the hypothesis seemed to disprove major plot elements in one of my favorite novels, CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR. Now I can rejoice that Ayla's half-Cro-Magnon, half-Neanderthal baby could have existed.

Recent developments indicate that the human family tree is much more tangled than the diagrams in older books suggested. Several kinds of early hominids coexisted, rather than one species or subspecies following the last in orderly progression. I always found the idea of crossbreeding between "modern humans" and their close kin an intriguing possibility—if not that, at least close interaction between our kind and the "missing links." In the 1939 story "The Gnarly Man," by L. Sprague de Camp, a man in a sideshow claims to be the last of the Neanderthals. Isaac Asimov's "The Ugly Little Boy" portrays a Neanderthal child kidnapped by near-future scientists with a time machine. I don't remember reading any stories about surviving colonies of Neanderthals among us, but surely some author must have written one. I'd like to believe a Bigfoot population exists in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, and if so, I imagine them as a species of hominid displaced by our conquest of the Earth but not driven to extinction. And now we know about the "hobbits," an extinct, diminutive not-quite-human island-dwelling people.

One thing I don't like about that article on Neanderthal-human interbreeding—the writer's contrast between "Neanderthals" and "people." It has long been established that they were no less intelligent than the "modern humans" (Cro-Magnons) living alongside them in Ice Age Europe, even if their minds worked a bit differently, so they were "people" too. It's exciting to imagine the plot possibilities of sharing the planet with a different humanoid species. Civil rights for Neanderthals? Would racism and speciesism slip into society's treatment of them under the guise of "protecting" creatures who don't look quite like us and therefore are clearly a "lower" species of primate? I've just finished Charlaine Harris's latest novel, DEAD IN THE FAMILY; in her alternate universe, the legal rights of vampires are limited, and there's a push for legislation to force all were-creatures to register with a government agency. Our society's past track record with interracial relations, not to mention the current plight of gorillas and chimpanzees, hints that "cave men" among us wouldn't fare much better. By the way, did anybody watch the short-lived TV series by that title? From the reviews, it sounded so dumb I didn't bother. What a cool premise that could have been if treated seriously!

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

The Hurt Locker, Indie Films, Financing TV - Part I

I'll cut this long post into two parts again as an experiment.
-----------
Introduction
The topic here is "If you want to understand the world, follow the money." And by following the business model and financing sources for the fiction delivery system, we might understand things well enough to boost the Alien Romance field's respectability. So here is a history lesson in financing fiction, followed by how that historical root has shaped what's happening now and reveals what might happen next. If you anticipate what's going to happen next, you can turn a profit on it.
---------
Part I

The world of commercial fiction has been turned inside out, upside down, and backwards by the advent of the Web, and especially Web 2.0 with Web 3.0 and even 4.0, all going mobile.

iPhones, iPads, TV sets that hook up to your home network and let you fish for TV shows and films posted online, with or without a fee, nevermind Kindle and now iPads that can access Kindle's library.

The result of all this technology is a world which closely resembles the world STAR TREK fanzine writers really wanted to create.

And I don't mean in their fiction. Most portrayals of The Enterprise in STAR TREK fanzine stories was less futuristic than the 1960's TV show itself.

I mean in the ability to participate in joint story creations, to communicate instantly, to collaborate and share, all to the purpose of expressing in fiction what is nearest and dearest to the heart. To share universes.

In order to create and purvey their pastiche fiction based on a TV show, fan writers invented an entirely new world.

But they didn't do it all by themselves out of nothing.

Here's how it happened, and I'll show you below what all this has to do with The Hurt Locker (the film about a bomb squad in Iraq that won an Academy Award in 2010).

This also relates to the transformation of the artist's business model by the re-defining of "copyright" erupting from the whole Open Source software movement, and Creative Commons Licensing.

And that copyright issue can be traced back to Star Trek fanzine writers too. Oh, what a tangled web!

Before 1966 and Star Trek, in the 1930's, science fiction magazines connected readers of science fiction and basically invented modern SF as well as SF fandom. In fact, the very people who invented modern SF and created that community (called First Fandom) actually invented the word "fandom" out of "fanatic" and "domain" or "Kingdom."

Science Fiction fans, a bunch of guys, mostly in New York and Philadelphia, got together (physically met in one physical place), and kept meeting regularly and irregularly and created "conventions" as the events where the most of them would turn up.

They admired the writers in the magazines and the very few books. As it became hard to get together physically, they began writing to each other about the stories in the magazines and books, and about the writers, and about each other, and about the most recent gatherings. They invented an entire language to discuss these matters.

There came to be more and more of them, so they needed many copies of their letters to each other, and invented "fanzines." At first these were a few pages filled with letters and essays, copied on a spirit duplicator (which printed in purple ink), and later on mimeograph (decades before xerox copiers were invented), and stapled, then mailed to each other via the Post Office. Yes, snail mailed.

The letters would typically be a few weeks or a few months old by the time you got to read them.

At first, nobody charged money for these fanzines. You got them by contributing a letter or article. The publisher footed the expense out of pocket.

Some 'zines became so large that publishers asked non-contributors to pay a fee for paper, printing and postage. Audiences grew.

I have a fanzine of this variety with a letter from me in it, and my contributor's copy took more than 3 years to catch up with me, what with all the forwarded addresses.

I joined SF snailmail fandom when I was in 7th grade and have been a member of the N3F ever since (National Fantasy Fan Federation - founded by damon knight who also founded SFWA, the profession SF writer's organization where I'm also a Life Member).

Into this world of SF Fandom, Star Trek was born. The show captured the attention of SF Fen (the plural of fan is fen). They discussed it in fanzines.

Devra Langsam and some other New York fen who were captivated by Star Trek started a Star Trek fanzine called Spockanalia -- on mimeo, paper now totally disintegrated, ink faded, and I still have my copies. I had an article MR. SPOCK ON LOGIC, in the 4th issue.

The idea caught on, and suddenly Spockanalia was publishing fiction.

SF 'zines usually didn't publish fiction except as send-ups, spoofs, farces and gotcha's.

But suddenly, dozens of Star Trek fanzines were publishing fiction and articles and letters of comments on the fan written fiction and articles. A whole new world of Star Trek was born.

And Star Trek conventions where fanzines were sold, and story ideas concocted for more fanzines.

I created the Star Trek Welcommittee (modeled on the N3F Welcommittee which had welcomed me into fandom)to answer fan mail from STAR TREK LIVES! ST Welcommittee connected thousands of new and isolated Star Trek fans to the snailmail network. It's being reincarnated on facebook by another fan now.

Today that snailmail world of fanfic and letters of comment on fanfic lives and grows online. Last week here (May 4th, 2010) we derived a writing lesson in SHOW DON'T TELL from a bit of fanfic based on the TV show White Collar published on fanfiction.net.

What has SF Snailmail Fandom to do with Indie Films?

Star Trek fandom produced (is still producing) billions of words of fiction derived from a TV show. It connected thousands of writers and readers in a network that spanned the globe and discussed life in terms of fiction.

The content of that fanfiction violated all the "rules" and requirements of published SF, but was in most cases actually SF.

For a quick overview of classic Star Trek fanfic and some prime examples you can read free see:

http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/

The SF-Romance was, I believe, first explored in one of those fanzines, an Inspirational SF Romance.

http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/showcase/

Those first classic ST fanzines sold and traded at Star Trek conventions gave rise to the "genzine" -- 'zines that contained not just Star Trek but pastiche derived from other TV shows (Man From Uncle, The Professionals). Then whole 'zines devoted to other shows (Dr. Who, etc).

Today, fanfiction.net has almost every TV show's fans posting fanfic.

These original TV spinoff fanzines had to be non-profit (and able to prove it) because of violation of copyright. At first, Star Trek, and other shows tried to stop fanzines being printed and circulated with actual legal cease and desist notices for copyright infringement.

This led to a clarification of the copyright law called today "fair use" and with a proper disclaimer and proof you make no profit, you can distribute fanfic.

That re-energized the fanfic community, and now a whole generation has grown up with a very different idea of what copyright is and what it's for.

Remember, Star Trek gathered, connected and energized whole communities of very geekish tech-minded young people. Out of that community's attitudes and activities has arisen the "Open Source" software movement and Creative Commons licensing.

Now we have a whole philosophy of life based on the "Open Source" concepts.

Meanwhile, also out of the (mostly) women fiction writers and readers arose another boundary shattering behavior.

The women who wrote TV pastiche wanted SF-Romance, and wouldn't let the traditional publishers deny it to them. They wrote it themselves.

At that time, you could not sell (professionally) any original SF or Fantasy that had even ONE sex scene in it.

Fanzine markets grew explosively after STAR TREK LIVES! was published by Bantam.

Then you could have go-to-black sex scenes in prof SF/F novels but human/non-human sexual relationship was considered, well, ...kinky?

1985, my SF Romance DUSHAU won the first Romantic Times Award for SF. (3rd novel in that trilogy gets right down to the sexual issue)

For Kindle edition and free chapters see
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

November 16, 1986 issue of The New York Times Book Review published (now famous traditionally published SF author) Camille Bacon-Smith's article SPOCK AMONG THE WOMEN featuring Jean Lorrah and Jacqueline Lichtenberg's Star Trek fan fiction.

Then you could have chaste, non-anatomical-language sex scenes in prof SF/F novels.

Academic books mentioned ST fanfic, other newspapers, TV interviews, the internet -- online fanfic explosion.

And now you can hardly sell SF or Fantasy without fully orchestrated, every detailed action revealed, sex scenes. And prof Romance novels use sex scenes the way SF novels once used action-scenes -- as a pacing, punctuation between plot developments.

As the teen fanfic writers and readers grew up, the professional market accommodated their demand for more sex in their adventure fiction (i.e. mixing genres).

Now the biggest professional market is kickass heroine fantasy with combat punctuated by sex scenes. SF without sex isn't selling so well.

SF Snailmail Fandom formed the basis of ST snailmail fandom which created a market which is now served by traditional publishers.

The Indie Film community is following the same developmental path.

The Hurt Locker is an Indie Film. (Independent Film; not a product of Disney, Warner Brothers, big studios).

It's not even the first Indie to win that kind of major attention. Low budget, non-studio films, have done this before.

And that's not a new path. The women's Gothic Novel, once circulated in handwritten manuscripts woman-to-woman, eventually emerged into professionally printed novels.

What young teen fans do quietly on their own, even privately, eventually (used to take 40 years; now it may be only 10 years) emerges to dominate the adult world.

The Indie Film was essentially a fanzine until recent years, and at some levels still is. Most of the indies made are made by beginners or amateurs just for the fun of it.

YouTube has unleashed a flood of talent among the youngest people, learning to entertain an audience with a video, just as young people learned to entertain readers with fanfic and moved on to become professional writers and editors -- who now publish material with those same quirks professionally.

Recent works, like The Hurt Locker, are blazing a trail for works done as much from love of the subject and the medium as for the profit, are reaching award levels.

You must see this one, starring Nichelle Nichols -- click this link to see all the very interesting awards this film won --

Lady Magdelene's
(if you've got 2 or 3 hours - you can watch it on amazon video on-demand for $3)

http://www.amazon.com/Lady-Magdalenes/dp/B002XKK3ZM/rereadablebooksr/

Clicking that link won't force you to pay. You can see all about the movie.

This is a well marketed indie film.

I loved it because the flaws don't bother me any more than the flaws in a fanzine. It showed me a lot about what's happening in the low budget, indie film market, and what real professional skill used in a bare-bones budget film can achieve.

And this one won a number of film festival awards besides the one listed on imdb.com

The point here is that Indie Films have become the modern fanzine, even more than text pastiche on fanfiction.net

And the off-beat, violate-all-the-rules content of these films is becoming mainstream because these indie films are creating an audience.

This Indie Film audience is like the readers of SF in the 1970's who stopped buying traditionally published SF to spend their time and money on Star Trek fanzines.

And then, when Star Trek novels were published by Pocket, they might read those novels, but flatly refuse to follow the professional SF authors who wrote those novels into the author's other SF/F universes.

The publishers concluded that Star Trek fans were not interested in SF/F.

They were wrong.

It was the traditional publisher's rules that turned the readers off.
----------
So here I'll cut you off in suspense. Look for Part II next Tuesday.

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

Racism and Romance, Speciesism And Subplot

Sometimes, the nastiest topics make for the best stories. Horror, Murder, forbidden love... almost every taboo.

Book Four of the Raine Benares Novels got me thinking about racism and speciesism. And Romance.

I feel I ought to say that Lisa Shearin has been an auto-buy for me since I read her first book in the series, Magic Lost, Trouble Found. I've enjoyed all four of Raine's adventures to date, and am pleased to hear that there will be two more books. I finished Bewitched and Betrayed in the small hours of Wednesday, and have not yet quite recovered.

Yes, it was a page-turner, and I was thoroughly self-indulgent/irresponsible to stay up half the night to finish it. I'm too old for that! Moreover, as I painted a ceiling yesterday, I found myself reciting the name of one of the fascinating male characters. Now, I'm really too old for that!!!!

Spoiler alert.

I'm going to try to avoid a spoiler.... but I suppose most of Lisa Shearin's avid readers and followers know that Lisa announced on her blog that there would be a decision made regarding Raine's love triangle.

Moreover, Lisa Shearin's world-building, characterization, and creativity is so enchanting that I cannot believe that the primary reason people read books two, three and four was because they wanted to know how the love triangle would be resolved.

Possibly, a menage would have been more interesting as a solution. Definitely, actually.

Which brings me back to speciesm.

To my way of reading this series, everything boils down to the simmering hatred that the goblins have for the elves and vice versa. It's like Iran and Israel. The insane and evil goblin King and his current administration would like to purge the world of elves. The elves would like to exist. If they are attacked, they will defend themselves vigorously.

Everyone wants the ultimate weapon, even the undead. (Which reminds me of Harry Potter and The Sorceror's Stone on steroids, because the only safe person to have the weapon --a stone-- is the one person who does not want to use it.)

Not every goblin is bent on world domination. There are broad-minded goblins. There are goblins who are sexually attracted to elves. Society disapproves of inter-species liaisons, but lust rules --or at least, it rules the loins of goblin dark mages-- so there are half-breeds, and the half-breeds tend to be badly treated by both high elves and old goblins.

There are also evil-minded elves who favor pre-emptive strikes and ethnic cleansing. One can be beheaded for having a mismatched pair of parents, or for marrying into the wrong race, provided more reasonable charges can be trumped up for a legal figleaf.

Pun intended, goblins come in all shades of grey. The elves run the entire moral gamut, from the darkest of elven dark mages to bright white avenging archangels.

Traditionally, do forbidden love stories have to either end badly? Could an elven Juliet ever expect to live happily ever after with a goblin Romeo? Would Shakespeare's play have been classed a successful comedy if the nice, virtuous Paris (Juliet's father's choice for her) had been a little more proactive?

Master Plot #15 in Ronald B Tobias's "20 Master Plots (And How to Build Them)."
Forbidden love stories never end well. Abelard was lucky. He only got castrated.

Much as I would like to read a forbidden love story with a happy ending, Raine's is not a forbidden love story at all. The racism and speciesism are background and motivation for the bad guys.

Pity! Then again, off the top of my head, I cannot think of any good examples of SFR where an alien hero's people seriously want to wipe out the human heroine's people.

Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed Bewitched and Betrayed, and recommend it highly.

Vision and Intelligence

About a week ago I saw a TV show on the Science Channel about animal intelligence. I'd heard about most of the phenomena before, such as the evidence that parrots don't merely "parrot" words but apply them in the proper context. For instance, a parrot won't say "goodbye" when a person is arriving. A parrot on this program actually knew how to add, or at least to count cumulatively, which is basically the essence of adding. While the trainer was testing another bird on identifying numbers, the older bird spoke up with "two" when the first two items were shown. When another pair of items was shown, instead of "two," the older bird said "four." And when yet two more items appeared, he said "six." There was no chance of cues from the trainer, as is the usual explanation for animals who "count," because the trainer was trying to get the less experienced bird to say "two," not even interacting directly with the older one.

One feature on this program was completely new to me, though: Monkeys can recognize—and count—objects in pictures. The experimenters put out two boxes, one with a picture of an apple, the other with a picture of one and a half apples. The monkeys consistently went to the box with the image of a larger amount of fruit. A further experiment tested whether they knew the difference between an image and a real object, which human babies don't, at first (below a certain age, a baby will try to pick up a pictured object off a page). Monkeys do know the difference; they always went for a real fraction of an apple taped on a box rather than box with a picture of whole apples. (It was not explained how the experimenters ruled out the possibility that the animals identified the real fruit by smell rather than by three-dimensionality.)

Suppose, however, we meet aliens with eyes or brains so different from ours that, although intelligent, they don't recognize that a two-dimensional image is supposed to represent an object? Remember the rabbits in WATERSHIP DOWN, who are presented as living and thinking like rabbits but with a human degree of self-awareness. Like those potential aliens, they are baffled by another rabbit warren's attempt to portray events from their myth cycle in the medium of two-dimensional mosaics. How can colored stones stuck on a wall "be" the rabbit god? Human beings are so used to learning and teaching by means of pictures that this difference might present a major impediment to recognizing the other species' intelligence or, at least, communicating with them. In a different medium, suppose those ETs had literally no concept of or capacity for nonfactual speech? Imagine the alienness of trying to communicate with a species that couldn't understand stories or even hypothetical examples.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

TV Show White Collar Fanfic And Show Don't Tell

The previous two weeks, we have looked at 7 Pursuits to engage in that will help you teach yourself to write.  Those posts are:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/04/7-pursuits-to-teach-yourself-writing.html

and

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/04/7-pursuits-to-teach-yourself-writing_27.html

One very fruitful exercise in teaching yourself to write is writing fan fiction about your favorite TV show or movie characters.

So now we're going to use the USA Networks TV show White Collar for a lesson (an arduous lesson) in SHOW DON'T TELL.  I'm going to try to show-not-tell how to show-not-tell, then explain what I did and give you a chance to do the drill.   

You don't need to have watched White Collar to grasp the elements in this drill, but it might help to browse the website for White Collar.

http://www.usanetwork.com/series/whitecollar/  (the website comes on with audio-commercials)

Writing is a performing art, as I've told you I was taught, and as such it is a vocation, a calling, more than a profession.  Writing is a lifestyle.

Writers do it even when reading.  Can't help it.  If you're a writer, you are constantly and incessantly rewriting everything you read, or even TV shows you watch -- even great TV shows like White Collar. Yes, Watching TV is work for a writer.  I watch about 6 hours of fiction a week. 

So a friend of mine pointed me to a bit of fanfic she had written based on White Collar.  She's a seasoned professional writer who can't write without plot, pacing, style, structure, and conflict that resolves.  Like all writers, she rewrites TV shows as she watches them, then continues to write the show's story-arc, fixing little things here and there. 

Like me, she watches White Collar with an eye on the pickle Neal finds himself in.

That situational pickle is why I like the show.  I liked Remington Steele, Quantum Leap and It Takes A Thief for the same reason - the pickle inherent in the situation. 

Most TV series, especially anthology series, don't address the inherent pickle.

That pickle is called the "springboard" and is a vehicle to get you into the story, not something that they intend to resolve. 

Quantum Leap is a good example.  Only occasional episodes addressed the physics of the problem that got Dr. Sam Beckett stuck leaping from one time to another or how to get him out of that pickle.  The point of the show was "solving problems" in people's lives by taking over their life from inside their own body. 

But the only thing that interested me was the pickle and the solution, not the problems of the people he visited. 

Time Travel Romance routinely does this too.  The mechanism of the time travel leap is more fascinating to me than the Romance unless the writer can make them one and the same -- the novel A Knight In Shining Armor now out on Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/Knight-Shining-Armor-ebook/dp/B000FC0QO8/rereadablebooksr/
is an example of making the Romance more prominent than the time-travel mechanism. 

So, in the TV Show White Collar, the Romance and the pickle are intertwined perfectly.  You've got to solve the pickle to solve the Romance.  You've got to solve the Romance to solve the pickle. 

Neal agrees to work for the F.B.I. helping catch white collar criminals (his colleagues and rivals) in order to get out of jail so that he can find and maybe rescue his lover, the one serious relationship in his life. 

At the point of this story, Neal has just seen his soul mate killed in an explosion and has nothing left.  The F.B.I. has him on a leash (an ankle tracking device).  Meanwhile, he's become good friends with the only cop ever to catch him.  The cop keeps tempting him to go straight. And any romance reader can see Neal's  wide-open to a new lover, but not emotionally settled enough yet.  

So my friend the writer starts plotting, and out comes a (brilliant) solution to Neal's pickle. 

It's 2AM after a hard day writing for pay, and she's jumping up and down with this fabulous idea.  Got to write it or she won't sleep a wink, nevermind write the next piece in a way that can earn her pay.  The mind writes what the mind writes. 

So she wades in to solve Neal's pickle in a real quick fanfic.  She's tired and wants to get right to her idea.  This piece is aimed only at those who watch this show's episodes over and over and probably write fanfic about it themselves.  They know the material, they don't need an introduction just a quick sketch of her particular variation on Neal's character, and then into the story she wants to write.

So she perpetrates the biggest no-no in the writing craft, right up front of her story where it really matters, she starts off with tell rather than show, cramming in some foreshadowing that doesn't belong in the opening, then dashes off the story itself and posts it.  As an afterthought, she points me to the first chapter of the story (which already has rave reviews being posted), "Look what I wrote.  What do you think?"  And of course she's referring to her solution to the pickle.   

And what do I do? 

I rewrite her opening tell into show and send it to her.

I had a grand old time writing fanfic to my friend's fanfic.  Then I realized I'd done a writing lesson I could use to show you what I've been talking about when I say "show don't tell" -- my friend does not need this lesson and knows that I know that.  She was not offended when I showed her my scene, and even agreed to let me use it for you.

Here's the URL for the story she posted - it has 7 chapters you can find in the dropdown at the upper right:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5885164/1/Grace_In_The_Confidence_of_Others

Here's the opening paragraphs as she wrote them. Read them, study, and rewrite them as SHOW rather than TELL before reading what I did. 

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

Summary – When Neal is playing a con, pulling a heist or creating a forgery, he has all the confidence in the world. But when these tools are not an option the only thing he has to save himself and the lives of others is something he's not too sure of at all, his own self worth.

Grace in the con fidence of others

Chapter 1/7

By Ultracape

They hung in almost every office, were tacked on nearly all the peg boards and some having been enthusiastically signed with a flourish by the grinning artist were framed and brought home and displayed in places of honor. There were few in the F.B.I.'s White Collar Crime Division who had not yet felt graced with a Neal Caffery original sketch.

It was the easiest con he'd every pulled, even if it was totally unintentional, and nothing to be proud of. As far as Neal was concerned if they were foolish enough to think his creations were any good he'd brag about his talent and play along. Then maybe he would not be the first one people looked to when something went missing in the office. Maybe he could get through a day feeling like his honest work meant something.

Even when he put his life on the line, something that happened with increasing frequency it seemed, it was not his word people trusted, it was his tracking anklet and the ever present threat of prison for the slightest infraction of what he felt were arbitrary and inconvenient rules, just begging to be broken for a good or even not so good cause.

The thing was, while it was rare for Neal to find any task difficult, when he did face difficulty, he did not have the experience to work it through. Fitting in, being accepted; playing by the rules eluded him, frustrated him and turned every day into a struggle to achieve what seemed to come so easily to others.

Gaining people's respect and trust in a persona for a con, for a heist, for the space of no more than a few weeks, was easy, especially for a man of Neal's brilliance. But earning the trust of others with nothing to show for his life but a list of alleged crimes, one conviction and a prison term was a greater challenge than he'd ever faced.

None but Neal's handler, partner and friend, F.B.I. Special Agent Peter Burke, could see through the armor of his fashionable suits, his charming veneer, his eagerness to be helpful, his know it all (because he did) attitude and his wit and puppy dog eyes to the troubled, childlike soul, the person who thought of himself as worth less than his doodles.

Now, just months since his girlfriend, Kate, had been killed, Neal's self-confidence was at an all time low. As far as Neal was concerned, the murder of his lady love, had been the final blow showing him that no matter what he did, what he accomplished, he was worth nothing, just some tool to be used by whoever needed his considerable criminal talents.

If trading his life for a hostage was needed it was no problem, and good riddance if said trade ended in his death. Thievery and coercion were against the law except if some mysterious uber-leader wanted to maneuver Neal into steeling something that supposedly didn't exist from a foreign government. But once Neal accomplished the deed, blowing him up was a convenient way to get rid of his inconvenient presence. And just for fun, pining a crime on him to cover up someone else's misdeeds was no big deal. As far as everyone was concerned, Neal deserved to be in prison, or dead.

Fine, he got the message. He was free as long as they could use him and his choices were prison or death and Neal did not want to go back to prison. Maybe this early morning meeting with Peter would lead to a means to an end. His experience as a consultant for the F.B.I. showed him how easy it was to step in front of a bullet even when he wasn't trying.

Having arrived early, Neal took out his small sketch pad he always kept with him to occupy his time. As usual, his thoughts drifted off to Kate and flashes of their life together, always ending with the explosion that took her from him. It was just that burst of brightness, this time from the sun angling its rays against a building and reflecting suddenly onto his face that he became aware he was staring out at the clear day, the tall glass monoliths sparkling in the morning light. He was halfway done before he even realized he was sketching the cityscape, somehow, even in black and white, capturing the brilliance of sparkling buildings, giving them a vitality unseen by passersby. His back to the door, Neal was so focused on his work that he did not notice the two men, one carrying a file, who walked into the room until one of them gasped.

"Oh my G-d, Peter!"

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

OK, to do a good job rewriting this opening, you should read the whole story, all 7 Chapters, but I had read only this first chapter to the end before I couldn't resist creating a SHOW out of this TELL opening. 

For the purposes of this drill, just reading that first chapter should be enough. 

I'm going to show you here an illustration of a simple fact I learned from Marion Zimmer Bradley. Writing is a craft.  It can be trained into you like driving, tennis, pottery.  The training consists of drill-drill-drill, and that's about it.  Talent of course helps, but is neither a necessary or sufficient condition to doing what I'm going to show you. 

This is an exercise in "put in the data and grind the crank."  It is a mechanical exercise devoid of artistic dimensions.  It is an exercise in walking and chewing gum.  It is an exercise in doing a lot of writing craft techniques simultaneously, and cross-integrating each with the other. 

This scene appeared in my mind, WHOLE and complete, produced by the training my subconscious has endured over the years.  Writing it down only took a few minutes.  I did not think about this.  I didn't laboriously figure it out.  My subconscious produced the scene in a flash-photo and I knew it was the SHOW that corresponds to the TELL in this story opening just twisted into my own characters. 

I watch this TV show, and I have inside my own head, a Neal & Peter set that doesn't resemble those my friend writes about here.  So in writing the scene down, I distorted her characters, and deleted points she had inserted as foreshadowing of the subsequent events that I hadn't read about yet. 

For her to attach my opening scene to her story would mean the entire thing would have to be rewritten, after rewriting my opening to correct the characters to be her own characters.  The foreshadowing I deleted would have to be moved to later.  And then the pacing and plot and everything else would have to be adjusted.

Had she stopped to create an opening scene instead of the long "tell" opening, it would have been an entirely different scene than the one I concocted.

This will be the case with anything you come up with to cast that TELL opening into a SHOW opening.  Your Neal (whether you've watched the show or not) is not my Neal or Ultracape's Neal. 

That's what makes fanfic so much fun!  You can have your cake and eat it too!  You can have dozens, even hundreds, of versions of the same character in various versions of a pickle, and watch the problem get worked out in thousands of ways. 

If you have no idea how to transform her TELL into a SHOW, here's a clue.  You need to create a SCENE in which almost all the information in her TELL is illustrated by visuals, by things, by actions, and by acting business.

To show not tell, you need to create a scene, so your piece must have a scene's STRUCTURE. 

If you don't know the rules for creating a scene, first read:

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

And it's sequel post:

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

Yes, "show don't tell" means "construct a scene that conveys this without saying this."

Scene Structure mastery cures Expository Lumps. 

Ultracape's opening "TELL" is mostly exposition. 

If you don't know what an Expository Lump is, or have been excoriated by your beta readers for expository lumps (or told your writing is boring), read these posts first:

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

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

And this one focusing on Michelle West's novel THE HIDDEN CITY as an example of information feed. 

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

I call what Ultracape did for the opening "information feed" - and she chose telling the information as exposition and narrative instead of showing it with a full fleshed scene. 

She did that because it's easier and faster.  You will find that you do it often, too, and on rewrite you are faced with the problem of how to fix it.  Sometimes a scene is the solution, so this exercise may help you meet a looming deadline one day. 

WRITE YOUR OWN SCENE NOW.

OK, now here's what I did with it.  Read what I did, then we'll go through it again, identifying the craft skills for various items in this scene.  Then you can rewrite what you did, if you think it's warranted.  You can post your results as a comment on this blog to get feedback. 

------------
GRACE IN THE CON FIDENCE OF OTHERS
(opening rewrite by Jacqueline Lichtenberg)

The motor pool sedan lumbered over the broken field. 

Neal Caffrey sat beside his handler, Peter Burke, who wrestled the car up next to a row of identical ones and parked it precisely in line.   Neal clutched a plain brown wrapped package in his lap and noted the hint of a smirk on Peter's otherwise friendly face.

Peter got out, pocketing the keys and leaned on the open door.  He surveyed the immense bon fire smoking downwind of the parked cars.  On the other side of the fire, a small fire truck and four geared up firemen supervised the flames.  On this side, four guys in F.B.I. jackets watched, hands in their pockets.

Peter looked back at Neal, eyebrows raised. "Well?  You going to pay off this bet, or not?" 

I'm not a welcher.  Never have been.  Even Peter knows that.  I thought.

Neal got out, slammed his door, and tucked the package under his arm.  "What now?" The bon fire of counterfeit currency blazed merrily. 

"Follow me."

Peter led the way up to the group of F.B.I. guys, hitched his suit jacket back and shoved his hands in his pockets, starting to talk before Neal got close enough to hear against the wind. 

As he approached, Neal's artist's eye took a snapshot of the tableau. 

In one instant, the group opened and swallowed Peter, becoming a group of five F.B.I. guys, one of which didn't wear a labeled jacket. But five F.B.I. guys, solid and unbreakable. 

Odd man out, Neal joined the group, very aware that it was still five guys and him, not six guys.

"...sure thing," one of them was saying.  "But I have to see what's in the package first."

"No problem," replied Peter, and gestured casually to Neal to unwrap the package in his arm.

Neal held the bottom of the package and ripped the taped shut top open.

"Oil paintings, on canvass," said Peter. "They'll burn easily.  All forgeries, we don't ever want to get back into circulation, if you know what I mean." 

One of the guys plucked a rolled canvass out of the package and held it open.  He whistled.  "You sure this isn't the real thing?" 

Neal interjected, "They're not."

The guy asked, "How do you know?" And he scrutinized Neal, as if checking his face against memorized wanted photos. 

"I painted them."

All four guys riveted eyes on Neal. 

"So," Peter broke in, "can we feed your fire?" 

"Go ahead." The guy handed Neal back the rolled painting. 

Peter gestured to Neal and the moment of paying off his bet with Peter came upon him like a cold shower. He'd been stupid to open his mouth and volunteer to burn these himself.  He had been so sure he'd been right about Dorothy Putnam's double timing her S.E.C. boss on those CDO's.  But she'd been lily white, and Peter had won the bet.

Neal walked up to the fire, gaining the alert attention of both firemen at the left and right of the pile of burning currency. 

A gust of wind drove the flames and smoke away from Neal, and he took that moment to hurl the first painting onto the fire. 

I can make more. he thought grimly as he flung each painting onto the leaping flames.  So why does this hurt? 

The brown wrapper followed the canvasses, flapping in the wind.

Neal turned to face the welded together group of five F.B.I. guys and paced the distance back to them. 

He could have just let me burn them in my fireplace. He made it back to the car certain he'd shown no hint of the pain he didn't let himself feel. 

By the time they arrived at the office, Neal's back had relaxed enough for him to stride freely down the corridor, even though fully aware of each of his freehand sketches displayed on the walls. 

They hung in almost every office, were tacked on nearly all the peg boards and some having been enthusiastically signed with a flourish by the grinning artist were framed and brought home and displayed in places of honor.

He realized he'd been doing a lot more of those sketches since the murder of his lady love.  There were few in the F.B.I.'s White Collar Crime Division who had not been captured in a Neal Caffery original sketch.

Why do they keep them? The scene of the morning returned full force, Peter melding seamlessly into the group of four F.B.I. guys, and himself apart.  He tried to shake it off.  They don't see me as just some tool to be used by whoever needs my unique skills!

But Neal knew that as far as those four guys were concerned, he deserved to be in prison, or dead, if they could only remember the right wanted poster.

But I've decided to do whatever it takes to stay out of prison, and I can do whatever I decide to do. Right?

Peter's phone rang. As he slipped it from his pocket, he said, "Neal, wait for me in my office, okay? I'll be right back."  And he took off down the hall, phone to his ear. 

Neal sighed and watched him go.  See?  What did I tell you? he told himself silently.  I'm just a convenience, a crime solving appliance.

He slipped into Peter's office and took out his small sketch pad he he carried for waiting-room-moments. 

As usual, his thoughts drifted off to Kate and flashes of their life together, always ending with the explosion that took her from him.

But this time, it was just a burst of brightness from the sun angling its rays against a building and reflecting suddenly onto his face, not an orange and angry black explosion.

He became aware he was staring out at the clear day, the tall glass monoliths sparkling in the morning light. His hand was sketching the cityscape, a simple pencil sketch capturing the brilliance of sparkling buildings, giving them a vitality unseen by passersby.

His back to the door, Neal was so focused on his work that he did not notice the two men, one carrying a file, who walked into the room until one of them leaned over his shoulder and gasped.

"Oh my G-d, Peter!"
-------------

And from there it's as Ultracape wrote it, presenting Neal with an opportunity to wriggle out of his pickle. 

This is an exercise in SHOW DON'T TELL.

In narrative or screenwriting, you must create VISUAL IMAGES out of intangibles, just as commercial writers have to make you want to buy a perfume or a particular brand of toothpaste. 

Things that have to be illustrated are emotions, attitudes, moods, character, relationship, background, backstory without exposition. 

So let's go through what I wrote again, looking for how I did that.  Then you can go through what you did, and see if you can think of a better way to do what you did. 

So here's my scene again with comments in CAPS. 

---------

The motorpool sedan lumbered over the broken field.  (OPENING IMAGE - A ROUGH JOURNEY NEARING AN END)

Neal Caffrey sat beside his handler, Peter Burke, who wrestled the car up next to a row of identical ones and parked it precisely in line.  
(CHARACTERIZATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP (BESIDE) AND OF PETER (NEAT, CAREFUL, ORGANIZED, RULE-CONSCIOUS).  SETTING AND BACKSTORY INDICATED - IDENTICAL CARS - FORESHADOWS THEY ARE FBI - FORESHADOWS THE IMAGE OF 4 MEN TOGETHER)

Neal clutched a plain brown wrapped package in his lap
MYSTERY, A QUESTION IS PLANTED, WHAT'S IN THE PACKAGE, WHY CLUTCHED? CHARACTERIZATION, CLUTCHING - NOT LIKE NEAL TO HANG ON. RELUCTANT TO CHANGE.

ALSO NOTE USE OF SYMBOLISM THROUGHOUT -- IF YOU HAVEN'T STUDIED THE USE OF SYMBOLISM SEE THIS POST
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html
and noted the hint of a smirk on Peter's otherwise friendly face.
CHARACTERIZATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP - WHAT NEAL NOTICES; OF PETER'S PERSONALITY; AND FORESHADOWS TO THOSE WHO WATCH THE SHOW THAT SOMETHING REALLY INTERESTING IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN AND NEAL ISN'T HAPPY ABOUT THAT.

Peter got out, pocketing the keys and leaned on the open door. 
BACKSTORY SYMBOLIZED WITH TYPICAL COP STANCE BEHIND OPEN CAR DOOR, CHARACTERIZES PETER IN METICULOUS POCKETING OF KEYS, ALSO SHOWS WITHOUT TELLING THAT NEAL HAS NO WAY OUT OF THIS SCENE EXCEPT FORWARD -- ONLY WE ALL KNOW HE CAN HOTWIRE THE CAR IN 15 SECONDS.  BUT IF HE DID, WHAT WOULD THAT DO TO THE RELATIONSHIP.  SO HE'S TRAPPED. 

He surveyed the immense bon fire smoking downwind of the parked cars.
VISUAL IMAGE THAT BEGINS TO REVEAL WHERE THEY ARE AND WHAT'S HAPPENING.  IT'S ALSO A VISUAL HOOK INTO THE SCENE. 

 On the other side of the fire, a small fire truck and four geared up firemen supervised the flames. 
SHOWS WITHOUT TELLING THAT THIS BON FIRE IS LEGIT, ON PURPOSE.

On this side, four guys in F.B.I. jackets watched, hands in their pockets.
TYPICAL GUY STANCE WHEN COMMUNING WITH BUDDIES, NON-THREATENING BODY LANGUAGE, YET STRONG, INDIVIDUAL AND SELF-CONFIDENT BODY LANGUAGE. ALSO JACKETS SHOW DON'T TELL THAT THIS IS AN FBI OP.

Peter looked back at Neal, eyebrows raised. "Well?  You going to pay off this bet, or not?"

AHA, DOWN TO BRASS TACKS OF THE SCENE.  PAY OFF WHAT?

NOTICE THAT SHOWING WITHOUT TELLING IS ROOTED IN PROMPTING THE READER/VIEWER TO ASK QUESTIONS BEFORE YOU PROVIDE ANSWERS.  THAT'S INFORMATION FEED TECHNIQUE, AND THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF STORYTELLING.

I'm not a welcher.  Never have been.  Even Peter knows that.  I thought.

NEAL'S SELF-IMAGE IS SHOWN BY HIS PRIDE IN KEEPING HIS WORD.  RELATIONSHIP IS SHOWN IN THAT NEAL KNOWS PETER KNOWS NEAL'S CHARACTER IS STRONG. THEN DOUBT CREEPS IN - THE BAREST HINT WITH "I THOUGHT".  ULTRACAPE TOLD US NEAL'S SELF-IMAGE WAS CRUMBLING UNDER THE REALITY OF HIS LOSS OF HIS SOUL-MATE, AND HERE WE SEE WITH OUR OWN EYES THE FRISSON OF THE FIRST CRACKS IN NEAL'S SELF-IMAGE SHOWING UP IN HIS SOLID RELATIONSHIP WITH PETER.


Neal got out, slammed his door, and tucked the package under his arm.  "What now?" The bon fire of counterfeit currency blazed merrily.

ACTION MOVES THE PLOT OF THIS SCENE ALONG.  AND A TAG-LINE OF TELL REVEALS WHAT WE HAVE BEEN LOOKING AT, AND MOST READERS NO DOUBT SUSPECTED, A CONTROLLED DISPOSAL OF COUNTERFEIT CURRENCY -- NEAL'S BIGGEST SKILL IS COUNTERFEITING CURRENCY OR ARTWORK.  IT'S HIS LIFE, THE PRODUCT OF ALL HIS EFFORTS TO LIVE WELL, GOING UP IN SMOKE UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE AUTHORITIES.  IT IS DEFEAT IN IMAGES.

"WHAT NOW?" IS THE CORE OF THE DILEMMA ULTRACAPE SKETCHES IN THE OPENING TELL.  NEAL IS AT A SYMBOLIC CROSSROADS IN HIS LIFE, NOTHING LEFT BEHIND, NOTHING VISIBLE AHEAD, FAILURE AT EVERYTHING, NOTHING TO PEG HIS SELF-ESTEEM ON ANY MORE. HE HIMSELF IS GOING UP IN SMOKE.  

"Follow me."

AGAIN THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THEM IS SHOWN.

AN ALTERNATIVE WAY TO DEPICT THIS BIT OF THE SCENE IS TO HAVE NEAL HEAVE HIMSELF OUT OF THE CAR, STALK AGGRESSIVELY ACROSS THE FIELD, AND HURL HIS PACKAGE INTO THE FLAMES WITHOUT ASKING PERMISSION, TURN AND BELLIGERANTLY YELL AT PETER, "SATISFIED?" -- THAT WOULD CHANGE THE CHARACTERIZATION, THE RELATIONSHIP, AND THE GIST OF THE STORY.

Peter led the way up to the group of F.B.I. guys, hitched his suit jacket back and shoved his hands in his pockets, starting to talk before Neal got close enough to hear against the wind. 

SHOW'S WITHOUT TELLING PETER'S A MEMBER OF THE FRATERNITY, ACCEPTED.  ALL ULTRACAPE'S EXPOSITION ABOUT ACCEPTANCE IS WRAPPED UP IN THIS AND SUBSQUENT IMAGES, SHOWN IN IMAGES NOT TOLD IN WORDS. 

As he approached, Neal's artist's eye took a snapshot of the tableau.

THIS STORY IS ABOUT NEAL'S ARTISTIC ABILITY, SO HERE THAT IS SHOWN WITHOUT TELLING, SHOWN WITH ACTION AND DESCRIPTION. 

NOW COMES SOME DESCRIPTION TO ILLUSTRATE THE EMOTIONAL CONTENT OF THE IMAGE NEAL CAPTURES WITH HIS ARTIST'S EYE.

In one instant, the group opened and swallowed Peter, becoming a group of five F.B.I. guys, one of which didn't wear a labeled jacket. But five F.B.I. guys, solid and unbreakable. 

Odd man out, Neal joined the group, very aware that it was still five guys and him, not six guys.

AGAIN NEAL'S UNCHARACTERISTIC SENSE OF ALIENATION SURFACES, AND IT SURFACES IN THE IMAGE OF THE FIVE GUYS AND HIM -- IT IS THE ARTIST IN HIM THAT IS ABLE TO EXPRESS EMOTION THAT HE OTHERWISE COULD NOT FACE VERBALLY. 

"...sure thing," one of them was saying.  "But I have to see what's in the package first."

"No problem," replied Peter, and gestured casually to Neal to unwrap the package in his arm.

AGAIN, WHO'S BOSS AND WHO'S OUTSIDER ILLUSTRATED, AND WE NOW MOVE TO REVEAL WHAT WAS CONCEALED IN THE SECOND PARAGRAPH OF THIS SCENE, CLUTCHING A BROWN PAPER WRAPPED PACKAGE. 

Neal held the bottom of the package and ripped the taped shut top open.

"Oil paintings, on canvass," said Peter. "They'll burn easily.  All forgeries, we don't ever want to get back into circulation, if you know what I mean." 

One of the guys plucked a rolled canvass out of the package and held it open.  He whistled.  "You sure this isn't the real thing?" 

FORESHADOWING THAT THIS ENTIRE THING IS ABOUT NEAL'S ART - AND ALSO HIGHLIGHTING THE SELF-ESTEEM ISSUE AT THE CORE OF THE STORY. 

Neal interjected, "They're not."

WORD INTERJECTED ILLUSTRATES NEAL IS THE OUTSIDER HERE.  AN INSIDER WOULD ADD OR ANSWER. HE'S NOT EVEN BEING ADDRESSED AND MUST INTERJECT.

The guy asked, "How do you know?" And he scrutinized Neal, as if checking his face against memorized wanted photos. 

AGAIN REJECTION.  SURELY BY NOW EVERYONE IN THE FBI KNOWS NEAL'S FACE. BUT NO, HERE'S A CREW THAT DOESN'T RECOGNIZE HIM.  NEAL IS FORCED TO SAY:

"I painted them."

BY LEAVING OUT LONG DESCRIPTION OF THE STRANGLED TONE OF VOICE NEAL IS USING HERE, THE GRATING SOUND OF IT ON HIS OWN EARS, THE BARE WORDS CARRY THE SUBTEXT AND LET EACH READER INTERPRET HOW THE LINE IS DELIVERED FOR THEMSELVES, THUS MAKING THIS SCENE THEIR OWN. 

All four guys riveted eyes on Neal. 

NOW HE'S GOT THEIR ATTENTION - DOES HE REALLY WANT IT.  BUT AGAIN, HE'S ODD MAN OUT.

"So," Peter broke in, "can we feed your fire?" 

ILLUSTRATES THEIR RELATIONSHIP - PETER SAVING NEAL FROM EMBARRASSMENT AT THE HANDS OF PETER'S COLLEAGUES.  PETER, MEMBER OF THE FRATERNITY; NEAL, OUTSIDER.

"Go ahead." The guy handed Neal back the rolled painting. 

STAGE BUSINESS HERE AN ACTOR COULD MAKE A LOT OUT OF. LET THE READER READ IT. 

Peter gestured to Neal and the moment of paying off his bet with Peter came upon him like a cold shower. He'd been stupid to open his mouth and volunteer to burn these himself.  He had been so sure he'd been right about Dorothy Putnam's double timing her S.E.C. boss on those CDO's.  But she'd been lily white, and Peter had won the bet.

HERE NEAL'S INNER DIALOGUE IS REVEALED WITH SOME NARRATIVE, AND THE OFFHAND REFERENCE TO AN EVENT NOT MENTIONED IN ULTRACAPE'S OPENING IS INSERTED TO SHOW DON'T TELL THAT NEAL IS NOT ONLY AT THE NADIR OF HIS LIFE, BUT INSULT TO INJURY HE'D LEAD THE FBI IN THE WRONG DIRECTION ON THEIR LAST CASE -- ON THE TV SHOW THERE IS NO DOROTHY PUTNAM OR SEC SCANDAL OR CDO BUSINESS.  I JUST MADE THAT UP FOR A BET NEAL HAD JUST LOST. 

Neal walked up to the fire, gaining the alert attention of both firemen at the left and right of the pile of burning currency. 

A gust of wind drove the flames and smoke away from Neal, and he took that moment to hurl the first painting onto the fire. 

SYMBOLIC OF WHERE HE IS IN LIFE, HURLING HIS PAST INTO THE FIRE BECAUSE IT'S ALL A WORTHLESS SHAM. 

I can make more. he thought grimly as he flung each painting onto the leaping flames.  So why does this hurt? 

AS MOST MEN, NEAL FEELS HIS FEELINGS BUT HAS NO CLUE (AND DOESN'T WANT TO HAVE) WHERE THEY COME FROM OR WHY HE FEELS.  HE KNOWS HE CAN "MAKE MORE" -- REBUILD HIS LIFE -- BUT ON MORE SHAM, MORE CONS, A FALSE AND FAKE LIFE WORTH NOTHING BUT BURNING IN A BLEAK, OPEN FIELD UNDER THE WATCHFUL EYES OF THE AUTHORITIES. 

The brown wrapper followed the canvasses, flapping in the wind.

REALLY NOTHING LEFT, NOT EVEN THE WRAPPER.

WHAT HE HAD CLUTCHED TO HIMSELF, HE HAS NOW THROWN AWAY.  THIS IS THE BACKSTORY OF THE WHOLE TV SERIES UP TO "NOW" WHEN ULTRACAPE SOLVES THE PROBLEM EVER SO NEATLY. 

Neal turned to face the welded together group of five F.B.I. guys and paced the distance back to them. 

OK, BRAVELY FACE THE FUTURE. 

He could have just let me burn them in my fireplace.

AGAIN THE MORPHING RELATIONSHIP, THE UNCERTAINTY THAT HE EVEN UNDERSTANDS PETER.

He made it back to the car certain he'd shown no hint of the pain he didn't let himself feel. 

THIS INVITES FANFIC READERS TO RE-WATCH ALL THE SHOWS FOR HINTS OF NEAL'S INNER LIFE SHOWING THROUGH WHEN HE THINKS IT DOESN'T.  ALSO AGAIN, ANOTHER SHOW DON'T TELL OF HOW THE FACE HE TURNS TO THE OUTER WORLD IS A CONSTRUCT, NOT WHAT HE KNOWS AS HIS TRUE SELF.  HE DOESN'T LET HIMSELF FEEL HIS OWN PAIN, SO IT WON'T SHOW, BECAUSE - WHAT? IF IT DID SHOW WHAT WOULD HAPPEN? REJECTION? AGAIN, THE POINTS OF CHARACTERIZATION ULTRACAPE HIGHLIGHTED ARE SHOWN, NOT TOLD.  BUT IT'S JUST A LITTLE DIFFERENT THAN HER NEAL WOULD DO IT. 

By the time they arrived at the office, Neal's back had relaxed enough for him to stride freely down the corridor, even though fully aware of each of his freehand sketches displayed on the walls. 

HERE WE JOIN THE NARRATIVE ULTRACAPE WROTE WITH A DIFFERENT SEGUE.  HER OPENING "THEY HUNG IN ALMOST EVERY OFFICE" IS REALLY COOL, AND I WAS VERY SORRY TO LOSE IT.  SO I PUT IT IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH, AFTER REVEALING WHAT "THEY" ARE -- BETTER THAN SCRAPPING IT TOTALLY. 

They hung in almost every office, were tacked on nearly all the peg boards and some having been enthusiastically signed with a flourish by the grinning artist were framed and brought home and displayed in places of honor.

He realized he'd been doing a lot more of those sketches since the murder of his lady love.  There were few in the F.B.I.'s White Collar Crime Division who had not been captured in a Neal Caffery original sketch.

Why do they keep them? The scene of the morning returned full force, Peter melding seamlessly into the group of four F.B.I. guys, and himself apart.  He tried to shake it off.  They don't see me as just some tool to be used by whoever needs my unique skills!

But Neal knew that as far as those four guys were concerned, he deserved to be in prison, or dead, if they could only remember the right wanted poster.

But I've decided to do whatever it takes to stay out of prison, and I can do whatever I decide to do. Right?

Peter's phone rang. As he slipped it from his pocket, he said, "Neal, wait for me in my office, okay? I'll be right back."  And he took off down the hall, phone to his ear. 

Neal sighed and watched him go.  See?  What did I tell you? he told himself silently.  I'm just a convenience, a crime solving appliance.

BLENDING INTO ULTRACAPE'S FIRST SCENE, BRINGING A SHOW DON'T TELL IMAGE INTO THE APPROACH TO THE OFFICE, CREATING AN EXIT FOR PETER SO HE CAN RE-ENTER WITH THE GUEST AND NEW OFFER.

He slipped into Peter's office and took out his small sketch pad he he carried for waiting-room-moments. 

As usual, his thoughts drifted off to Kate and flashes of their life together, always ending with the explosion that took her from him.

But this time, it was just a burst of brightness from the sun angling its rays against a building and reflecting suddenly onto his face, not an orange and angry black explosion.

He became aware he was staring out at the clear day, the tall glass monoliths sparkling in the morning light. His hand was sketching the cityscape, a simple pencil sketch capturing the brilliance of sparkling buildings, giving them a vitality unseen by passersby.

His back to the door, Neal was so focused on his work that he did not notice the two men, one carrying a file, who walked into the room until one of them leaned over his shoulder and gasped.

"Oh my G-d, Peter!"

AS PETER BRINGS HIS GUEST AND SUGGESTION INTO NEAL'S LIFE, WITH THAT BURNING PAINTINGS SCENE TACKED ONTO THE OPENING, WE HAVE A REVERSAL OR SWITCH, A BIG TURNABOUT IN THE RELATIONSHIP.

IN MY OPENING SCENE, NEAL IS FEELING -- NOT THINKING -- THAT PETER HAS REALLY ABANDONED HIM, THAT PETER IS BEING CRUEL ON PURPOSE IN SOME WAY, AND NEAL ISN'T SURE HE DOESN'T DESERVE IT.  NEAL IS JUST IN GRIEVING MODE, TOTALLY LOST, AND FEELING ABANDONED BY PETER, HIS LAST FRIEND.  BUT HERE, ALL OF A SUDDEN, IT'S REVERSED, AND PETER IS PROVIDING A SOLUTION THAT TAKES INTO ACCOUNT WHAT ART REALLY MEANS TO NEAL, A MEANING NEAL HIMSELF HAS NO CLUE (YET) EXISTS.

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

Now, go over the scene you constructed, identify the techniques you did use, and make sure you've used all of the ones I've noted above.

Make your scene says what you want it to say, and with the characterization spin that you prefer -- but make it clear and vivid what your spin actually is.

This is a drill in SHOW DON'T TELL which is designed to prompt you to carry the dynamic evolution of a new icon for modern Romance into the future. It's all about Relationship shown but not told. 

For more on the Romance iconization, see:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/04/turning-action-into-romance.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Intergalactic Bar & Grille Party Photos

Okay, it's that time of year. The fantabulous Romantic Times BOOKlovers Convention just concluded--this year in Columbus, OH. The 5th (I think it's 5th) annual Intergalactic Bar & Grille Party was a hit! Here are some photos from the fun and mayhem. Authors hosting the party, along with me, are: Jess Granger, Karin Shah, Jade Lee, Catherine Asaro, Isabo Kelly, Colby Hodge aka Cindy Holby, Liddy Midnight, Janet Miller, and Stacey Kade aka Stacey Klemstein...

Special thanks to Nikki (aka Expendable) for these photos!

Next year, Los Angeles!
~Linnea
www.linneasinclair.com

Authors Raising Money For Charity

May is the month during which Brenda Novak and her publishing industry friends auction off books, critiques, promo packages, advertising space, book tours, chocolate, jewelry and much, much more to raise money for Diabetes Research.

Here's Brenda's Home page
http://brendanovak.auctionanything.com/

Here's Rowena Cherry's page.
http://brendanovak.auctionanything.com/Bidding.taf?_function=detail&Auction_uid1=1773459

Here's my demo (mine is 7 minutes long and is the first chapter of Mating Net) although the offer is for 2 minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_ydNfyLM4Y