Theme-Plot Integration - Part 2: Fallacy As Theme

Last week we listed a number of prior posts that form the foundation of this advanced writing exercise of integrating two huge skill-sets, THEME and PLOT. 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-1-never-let.html

I pointed out the origin of PR (publicity, public relations, shaping "public" opinion) and how that science has been so effective in molding our current culture. 

In November 2012, I saw the following tweet on twitter:
"Common perspective in India: when something comes from the Internet, it's free of cost" #ebkstats @DigiBookWorld

Please also note this Guest Post on this blog:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/sharing-is-piracy.html

That "common perspective" concept is what I'm talking about here.  "if it's from the internet, it's free." is a fallacy for us and common sense for them. 

Remember our whole, long, discussion of "fallacy?" 
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/09/theme-worldbuilding-integraton-part-2.html

I saw a post on Facebook in December 2012 from a person talking to a professional writer.  The person wrote that during a bit of research on the Web, looking for a quote from a deceased writer's work, a "free download" pdf of the novel came up.  The researcher was utterly astonished that anyone could possibly think they were doing a Good Deed to post free downloads of books -- and went to find one to buy that would pay the estate properly. 

I'm astonished anyone is astonished that book piracy is now considered a Good Deed.  That's a cultural concept, and a fallacy -- study it because it's exactly what either binds a couple in Romance, or repels Soul Mates from each other.  Fallacies are wondrous sources of conflict for your novel plots because they are, inherently, the material of THEME.  Pick the right fallacy, and you've got Theme-Plot Integration that is effortless, seamless, and beautiful to behold.

I used the key concepts behind misnomers and fallacies in my Sime~Gen Novel, Unto Zeor, Forever - which just came out from audible.com and also has paper and ebook editions.




If you're going to write about Alien Romance, you've got to be able to straddle the rift illustrated by that "fallacy" that the internet is free, and "sharing" anything is a Good Deed.  You must be capable of writing  convincingly from each perspective in turn, then resolve the difference (not for yourself personally, but as your characters would resolve their problem).  You must reduce the chasm for your readers, so both parties in the argument can straddle that chasm and hold hands, and admit they are Soul Mates. 

You can learn to do this if you understand culture.

But last week, I didn't mention one item that I've talked about a lot in these posts, the study of what culture is. 

A writer needs to study the definition of "culture" (anthropological definition) until it becomes very clear where inside the writer's own mind "culture" resides and what precisely that "culture" bin inside the writer's mind currently contains (and where that content came from; what fallacies reside there).  Then the writer must study culture as it functions in a lot of people that writer knows -- writers being natural people-watchers, this study does not take a lot of discipline.  In fact, it's hard for a writer-type person to resist becoming obsessed with this study.

Beyond studying yourself and people you know very well, though, you must extend that study to the general public around you, and then to the whole world.

Why does a writer need a "feel" -- on a deep, subconscious level -- for culture in order to write hot romance?  Because the hottest of heats is generated where cultures conflict.

And anthropologists have identified "female culture" and "male culture" -- in fact, there's women's language and men's language.  Human cultures usually develop private ceremonials for men and for women separately, in addition to public events that involve both.  In modern America, you see that in house parties where somehow the women end up in one room (often the kitchen or back porch) while men end up clustered in another room, (often the parlor or living room). 

I'm currently reading a self-published mixed-genre SF/Romance with time travel jumbled in.  It's a relationship driven novel.  I should like it.  But the author appears to have skipped this step of studying culture until it's second-nature, then learning how to integrate that study into Theme-Plot integration.  The pieces of this novel just don't meet at the seams -- like a building that's been added-onto and the floors and walls miss the seam by a couple inches, disorienting the eye.

So the study of how Public Relations science is being employed by the Big Money to shape our culture is important to the SF/Romance fiction writer who needs to create verisimilitude.

It's also important to the futurologist who wants to worldbuild a background for a novel set in the future.  You must extrapolate, using "What if ...?"  "If only ..." and also "If this goes on ..." starting with trends today, and extending them along the path they are traveling.  Then find the forces (such as the subconscious conflicts in the minds of those allocating Big Money to PR thrusts) that will CHANGE that future course.

Here is one such present-time trend to work this exercise with.

--------------QUOTE---------------
Big Brands Are Pouring Money Into Their Own Custom News Sites

On top of their multi-million dollar advertising budgets, huge companies are now diving into an arena previously dominated by traditional media. They're producing videos, releasing interviews with top executives, and providing unique looks inside their organization on their own specialized websites.

It's a way to present a carefully crafted message to consumers, and change the way traditional media interacts with companies. Content marketing overall has become at least a $16.6 billion business, and these sites are taking a growing share. 

We spoke to Alexander Jutkowitz, the managing partner partner of Group SJR, a digital firm which helps run content sites for GE, Credit Suisse, Target, and Barneys about why companies are doing it.

Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Where did the idea come from?

There are a few trends in the marketplace or in the world that we know about. There's media fragmentation, there is a lot of content, but frankly not a lot of great content, and there are a lot of organizations that have incredible knowledge that does not on a regular basis see the light of day. 

If it does, it's in a traditional sort of marketing model, whether that's advertising or even broadcast advertising. It's hard to transmit a lot of knowledge in 30 and 60 second spots. Traditional communications have been a bit lackluster in that sense because it's all about clear promotional content, and not content that really impacts and transfers knowledge.

There is both an opportunity for a great organization to communicate and to trend, and to really have their knowledge impact the world.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-ge-target-and-credit-suisse-are-creating-content-2012-11#ixzz2BSOkdBII

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

WRITERS REMEMBER!! "content" = "writing you can get paid for doing." 

I have recently seen tweets about how much a fiction writer makes.  It's less than minimum wage when you actually account for your time, and pay for all your expenses.  Finding ancillary sources of revenue you can tap using the same expensively-gained and maintained skills you use for fiction writing must be a part of your business plan as a self-employed writer. 

"Content" has value when it says something startling, something that stops the eye, baffles the mind, raises questions -- i.e. says something philosophically challenging to the reader. 

Where do you "get" the ability to listen to a business person (a publisher of a website, for example) say "I need suchandso" and just instantly come back with "How about this?" and provide what that content-publisher needs right now to attract eyeballs to the advertising on that website?

When the "this" that you propose turns out to go viral -- your employer asks, "How do you think of these things?" and you respond (having studied my posts here on Hollywood) "Oh, it just came to me." 

Why does it "just come to you?"  Very simple.  In a word, Philosophy.  Or, as writers refer to it, Theme. 

With your subconscious trained (hard) to be lean and strong in Philosophy, theme-plot integrated cultural statements "just come to you."  These vast ideas erupt in response to the vision of dollar-signs.  And that's just how it works. 

So the hours and hours you spend researching and learning the historical origins of PR allow you to understand how PR campaigns driven by the Big Money shape our ambient culture, but you don't get paid for those hours spent studying until you produce a piece of fiction that triggers that ambient culture into paying money to imbibe in your product. 

The entire concept of Love and Romance having some connection to "Marriage" has become a part of our culture as the result of a PR campaign.  (research that!)

So for our example in this study of Theme-Plot integration, we're looking at the broad subject of the "fallacy" and how it operates in the human mind, the "belief system" to shape our perception of reality.  Perception is more real to us than the objective reality itself. 

The residual results of any PR campaign can be found by listening for the phrase "they say."  Or "everybody knows."  Then watch the next generation of teens raised by those who know "they say."  Those new teens will not even question, but just know, what used to be a "they say."  It won't be "they" that say, but the teens themselves.  In fact, they may invent some word to describe that concept, thinking they originated the concept.  4-generations -- study the 4-generation span on these cultural beliefs, and learn to extrapolate them into the future.

This is how fallacies become bedrock cultural cornerstones never to be questioned.

Publishers perpetuate these fallacies by enshrining them in genre rules.  The Romance Genre (as well as Science Fiction itself) has fallen victim to this process. 

To illustrate how to investigate and then utilize an institutionalized fallacy to construct a theme-plot integrated story, we are studying the fallacy that Romance Is An Emergency. 

Maybe you don't think that's a fallacy.  It's OK - even true things can be treated as fallacy in fiction.  That process is the core of developing plot-worthy conflict. 

We left off last week with the following questions:

--------QUOTE------------
Why is Romance Genre singled out for scorn when all other fiction is even more unbelievable?

Romance Genre is special because everyone, in their heart of hearts, wants not just Romance, but entree into everlasting Love, solid and unbreakable Relationships, Family, enriched life.

Not only does everyone want it, everyone knows they are destined for it. 

Yet, time after time, in reality, they have had that promise of fulfillment snatched away.  The only possible psychological defense left is to believe staunchly that Happily Ever After is not possible.

Is Romance an Emergency?  When it happens, is it a life-or-death crisis in which one must drop everything and dash willy-nilly after the person who has evoked this vision of absolute fulfillment?

And if Romance is indeed an Emergency, then how should we treat it? 

How do we respond to Emergencies and Crises? 

Is there a malfunction in our society's training about how to respond to Emergencies and Crises?

Is our audience indoctrinated with some kind of fallacy that has warped our response to Emergencies? 

If so, what fallacy?  Where did it come from?  We, as writers, no doubt share that fallacy, so why bother to pinpoint it? 

The fallacy in our Emergency Response habits, if we can articulate it, can become our Theme, and the PINPOINTING of that fallacy  can become the plot of the breakout Romance that I've been talking about in this blog since I started looking for how Romance Genre can achieve the respect it deserves. 

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

The thesis I put forward last week is that Romance stories written as if falling in love is an emergency imbue the whole genre with the aura of a scam.  Scam artists use emergencies as a means of using their mark's greatest strengths (in the case of Romance, it's usually Trust) against them.

So when a Romance telegraphs that the "ending" -- the destination for this couple's relationship -- is HEA, or Happily Ever After, it is concurrently telegraphing that the emotional payoff of reading this novel will be unending pain -- it will evoke real world loss and real world hopelessness if you "buy into" the premise.

So that raises the two questions: a) is Romance an Emergency, and b) Is there something wrong with how we respond (emotionally) to emergencies?

Well, I have of course evolved my own answers to those questions.  Think yours through before reading further here. 

a) No, Romance is not an Emergency.
b) Yes, our culture has conditioned us via fallacy inculcation to respond to emergencies incorrectly.  The conditioning is so deep (via PR or Propaganda that I mentioned last week, a psychological Judo) that we can not find that fallacy to correct it. 

Those are my answers.  What good can my answers do you?  None.  None whatsoever.

But here is something that might give you a handle on how to construct your own novel about Romance. 

I will lay out my "work" (as in algebra, a derivation) so you can follow along and substitute your own reasoning point by point.  Again, my answers are of no value to you, but my system of reasoning through this problem might be.

Here's how it goes.

a) Romance is not an Emergency

Romance, usually arriving during a major transit of Neptune, is a matter of the Soul.  In fact, life itself -- existence on this material plane -- is really an adventure the Soul is taking, a dip into "life" to do a job.  It's a little like being in the armed services and being sent "abroad" to a theater where (if there's a war, or even if there is no actual war) the action is.

We come into this life to accomplish something, maybe more than one thing per lifetime.  There is a goal to our personal existence which is only about our own personal Soul -- and simultaneously that goal contributes to a larger job, known in the Occultist studies as The Great Work, a job which G-d created us to do.  Kabbalists identify that goal as making in this world a dwelling place for G-d, and that place is inside what they term your "Heart" -- not so much the physical organ as a level of being which powers your existence.  Very mystical stuff.

For the more highly evolved souls, Neptune transits bring prophecy, glimpses of the real reality underlying our reality, the truth behind the facts.  For the rest of us, Neptune drapes the world in a dense fog of wish-fulfillment fantasy, distortion, misunderstanding, (sometimes lies told or believed), or possibly of idealism, and very likely even a close encounter of the third kind with Religion, faith, belief in the impossible.

Bottom line: Neptune transits = Confusion

But during that state of confusion -- and in a lifetime, it's very probable you will experience many different sorts of Neptune transits that blur the world -- during that state of confusion is when Romance erupts into Life.

No wonder people marry the wrong person -- in a couple years, when the transit wears off, the hard edges of reality define the Relationship and it is no longer an Ideal.  Under Neptune, people marry to "rescue" (as in reform an alcoholic) and get trapped in the fog of co-dependency.

But for the more mature Souls, that "wrong person" ultimately turns out to be the right one, the most solid and dependable Relationship, the true Soul-Mate.

A Soul-Mate Relationship that arrives outside the window of a Neptune Transit doesn't begin with what is normally recognized as Romance. 

So, if the arriving Other is a true Soul Mate and this Relationship (whatever its form) is what this life is really about, then there's no way out of it.  The pairing will fasten down hard, and there can be no getting away from each other.  (as mentioned last week, Ahab and his whale, and Helen of Troy).

In that case, the arrival of that Other into your life is no emergency.  The Relationship will procede to Bonding.  You have only to choose (G-d endows us with Free Will) and accept.  Some call it karma.  If it doesn't crystallize in this life, no emergency -- next life will be soon enough. 

If this Other is not the true Soul Mate -- then nothing can be lost if the Other drifts away. 

So if there does exist such a thing as a Happily Ever After with a Soulmate, then that is the inevitable consequence of living well -- even if not in this lifetime.  Not everyone pairs in every lifetime.  The arrival of a Soulmate (even if not for the first time) is always exciting, energizing, riveting attention, consuming and delightful -- of highest priority -- but, it's not an emergency.

The principle is that what belongs to you is yours.  It's part of you.  You can't lose it and it can't be taken away from you (for long). 

b) Yes, our culture has conditioned us via fallacy inculcation to respond to emergencies incorrectly.

This is the core of the theme.  The Soul-Mate concept leading to the Happily Ever After is the signature of the Romance Genre, so it's not something we can challenge or alter, and in truth it is not the source of the Romance Genre being scorned.

So let's search for the fallacy in the way we respond to emergencies. 

Any soul-mate story's worldbuilding has to include some paranormal aspect, some presence or evidence of a G-d driven universe, because the very concept "soul" is paranormal by definition. 

In a universe with no G-d presence, how could you define Soul, the immortal spark of God-breath that energizes you and gives you stark individuality?  All Romance is set in a G-d driven universe, even when the Romantic liaison is just Happily For Now. 

So here we challenge the way we meet emergencies. 

Here's how it's done at the pinnacle of our society, out in public, by the public servants.  Here's the "model" we grew up seeing on TV News, and now all over the internet whenever an emergency happens.

-------------quote--------
DHS moves to allow oil tankers in Northeast to ease fuel shortage

Published November 02, 2012

Associated Press

The Department of Homeland Security is temporarily waiving some maritime rules to allow foreign oil tankers coming from the Gulf of Mexico to enter Northeastern ports.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says she is waiving the Jones Act, which prohibits international cargo ships from transporting oil between U.S. ports , until Nov. 13.

The rule is being temporarily waived to help ease the fuel shortage in the Northeast in the wake of Superstorm Sandy.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/11/02/dhs-moves-to-allow-oil-tankers-in-northeast-to-ease-fuel-shortage
---------------end quote ----------

And another Hurricane Sandy aftermath story from the news:

-------QUOTE-----------
‘No Red Tape’? New Jersey Turns Away Non-union Relief Crews
Posted on November 2, 2012

How desperate is hurricane-ravaged New Jersey? Not desperate enough to suspend a union monopoly that keeps the state in the bottom ten states for economic competitiveness (and #48 for business friendliness). Relief crews from Alabama who were specifically called to New Jersey found themselves diverted to Long Island, NY after they arrived because they use non-union labor. Alabama is a right-to-work state.

WAFF-TV of Hunstville, AL reports:

Crews from Huntsville, as well as Decatur Utilities and Joe Wheeler out of Trinity headed up there this week, but Derrick Moore, one of the Decatur workers, said they were told by crews in New Jersey that they can’t do any work there since they’re not union employees….

Understandably, Moore said they’re frustrated being told “thanks, but no thanks.”

With so much at stake–and lives still in danger–it would seem logical to tell special interests to step aside.

On Wednesday, while visiting cleanup efforts in New Jersey in the company of Gov. Chris Christie, President Barack Obama vowed: “We are not going to tolerate red tape, we are not going to tolerate bureaucracy.”

WAFF-TV: News, Weather and Sports for Huntsville, AL

Read more: http://conservativebyte.com/2012/11/no-red-tape-new-jersey-turns-away-non-union-relief-crews/#ixzz2B5Ff2JkS
---------END QUOTE -------------

It's this way with ALL our laws now, all the "rules" -- all the "regulations."

And it's the way we live our everyday lives under the rules and regulations of societal behavior.

In an Emergency, it's then OK -- in fact required -- to throw the rules and regulations out, to CUT THE RED TAPE.

In fact, after suffering under some ridiculous rule, we consciously or subconsciously create emergencies so we CAN toss the pesky rule out.

The fallacy?  That rules, regulations and laws are supposed to be for NORMAL TIMES. 

Do an ALTERNATE UNIVERSE worldbuilding exercise with that idea.

What would an urban fantasy set in "today" but in an alternate world be like if in that world the fallacy that laws exist for the purpose of defining and constraining normal, everyday behavior had never taken root?

What if the only laws on the books were those to be obeyed in emergencies?

Take that as your exercise for this week.

If you need a SETTING to work out a "CUT THE RED TAPE" fallacy/Romance plot, here's one that works with a natural inevitability:

 http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/15/us-edisonmission-bankruptcy-idUSBRE8BE02O20121215

Next week we'll continue exploring how to extract a theme from commonly believed fallacies.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

"Sharing" is Piracy

Too many tech savvy people who ought to know better appear to be constructing new business models based on the assumption that it is legitimate and innovative to provide ways for "readers" to "share" ebooks, or links to where ebooks are stored.

They are mistaken. If they believe that anyone may lend and ebook to a friend simply because lending takes place on Amazon, and file transfers take place via Drop Box and its ilk, they are fooling themselves and their investors and customers.

Amazon pays something like a 70% rate to publishers who agree that an ebook may have "Lending Enabled", and they pay approximately 35% to publishers who do not wish "Lending" to be available. When an e-book is loaned, the original purchaser (who is actually a licensee, not an owner) does not have access to their ebook. The loan is of limited duration, and when the loan expires, the borrower loses access to the ebook.

Marilynn Byerly has graciously consented to share her articles on copyright.

http://mbyerly.blogspot.com/2009/04/first-sale-doctrine-and-ebooks.html

Click on the "copyright" label for more info on various copyright issues.

As always, anyone here may use my articles on copyright at their own sites or blogs or whatever.

Marilynn Byerly

http://mbyerly.blogspot.com/
http://marilynnbyerly.com

Socially Assistive Robots

More about “socially assistive robots”: Here’s an article about a robot named Bandit that helps with rehab for stroke patients. A robot never gets tired or grumpy, and the fun of playing with it can encourage patients to persevere with demanding exercises that would otherwise get tedious:

Socially Assistive Robots

This more detailed article from three years ago discusses how robots are being taught not only to “see” and evaluate facial expressions but to react appropriately to sounds, heart rate, and even body heat:

Service Robots

Given that some people treat their Roomba robotic vacuum cleaners like pets, users tend to respond even more positively to devices that look and act sort of human. But not too much—these devices still have to avoid the “uncanny valley.” For example, autistic children prefer Kaspar, which looks like the conventional stereotype of a robot, over more human-like, doll-type androids.

Personal care robots as a concept are far from new in science fiction, of course. Remember Ray Bradbury’s story about a grandmother robot bought by a widowed father to care for his children, “I Sing the Body Electric”? They grow to love “her” as much as a flesh-and-blood caretaker. One unhappy little girl comes to see her as even better than a “real” granny because they can’t lose her to death.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Plot Integration - Part 1: Never Let A Good Emergency Go To Waste

So we continue to practice walking and chewing gum at the same time.  All of these posts focus on the nitty gritty of the craft of writing, with special emphasis on the specific challenges facing a writer who is combining Science Fiction or Paranormal with Romance of any type. 

I specialize in the relationship driven plot, (not always sexual or even romantic, as there was no romance between Ahab and the Whale!), but my own favorite type of story is Romance! 

Romance plots don't necessarily exclude war.  Do remember Helen of Troy!  And thinking of Helen of Troy, do remember that the entire situation of Helen of Troy was a blend of politics and religion, just as I have been discussing in the (so-far) 9 part series titled Worldbuilding With Fire And Ice.

So traditionally, from its very inception, the Romance genre has always included not only combat in all forms, but also the paranormal.  It's not like we're inventing a new genre.  It's more like we're teaching the publishing industry that we know how to turn out a great novel. 

We've looked at how to recognize, choose and structure theme, and how to tell theme apart from plot -- how to dissect out the independent variables within a completed novel.

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/shifting-pov.html
And a vocabulary lesson on how I use the words "plot" and "story" to distinguish the moving parts of a novel or screenplay.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/plot-vs-story.html

And here's one that has links leading back deeper into the posts on individual skills involved in crafting a plausible romance (for readers who don't believe that Happily Ever After is a point that real people in real life can achieve.)

Believing in Happily Ever After Part 4: Nesting Huge Themes Inside Each Other
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/10/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-4.html

Here are links to series of posts - they contain links to their previous parts. 

Here are links to 9 posts on "worldbuilding" -- a vast subject we aren't finished with yet (previous parts are linked in the last part).

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/10/worldbuilding-with-fire-and-ice-part-9.html

And here is a series about Theme-Worldbuilding integration:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/09/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-4.html

These first 4 parts on theme-worldbuilding integration focus on the current issue of bullying in our society, especially among children, and what that means in terms of targeting a readership.

For writers working with paranormal elements, here's a post on the outer-reaches of the philosophical:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/05/theme-element-giving-and-receiving.html

And one specifically on the use of theme in Romance.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-to-use-theme-in-writing-romance.html

Assuming you have been following along through these posts, we're now ready to look at some of the raw material of our current society's unconscious philosophical assumptions which can easily be dissected into fallacies.  Discovering and revealing a logical fallacy (whether it is, or is not true!) in another person's thinking processes is one very powerful way to discombobulate and thus manipulate another person into doing or saying something they will later regret.

LATER REGRETS are the sum and substance of great romance -- once burned, twice wary.

Because our current culture is rooted in a plethora of fallacies, writers have a vast and rich array of materials to choose from, all of which lend themselves to the hottest romance plots.

Do you LOVE people who have a habit of pointing out dire errors in your thinking that undermine your conclusions?  Are you attracted to them?  Fatally, perhaps?

Do you come to trust someone who has proven you wrong on a number of occasions, so that when an emergency erupts you no longer trust your own instant assessment of what to do about it?

How many times do you have to be proven wrong before you become  convinced the prover is always right?  When do you surrender your personal sovereignty to another person's judgment?

Were you raised by parents who kept telling you that you had bad judgment and made bad choices?

Did you actually make any choices as a teen that you later regretted and came to understand as bad judgment? 

Or was your judgment sound, but your premise fallacious?  Do you trust your judgment now?

Are you a good judge of character? 

Did you pick the right Presidential Candidate based on sterling character traits?

Have you ever discovered a fallacy in your own reasoning? 

If you can't find an instance to relate to, just think back over all the TV commercials you've seen for products, and the money you've wasted on things that don't work as advertised.  That happens because you fail to see the fallacy in the commercial.

TV commercials are structured by a) LAWYERS (commercials can't ever say things that the company can be sued for -- they can lie, but the law allows lies) and b) MARKETERS who specialize in manipulating behavior of large groups.

To see what I'm saying here about legal-lies, read this post:
November 6, 2012  HOW TO WRITE LIAR DIALOGUE
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/11/dialogue-part-5-how-to-write-liar.html

To see what I'm talking about for MARKETERS see this post on the Overton Window phenomenon and marketing.  Even Presidential campaigns are now woven of the substance of this science.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/10/glenn-beck-didnt-invent-overton-window.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/01/failure-of-imagination-part-4-teasing.html

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

The creation of a popularizable "image" is often called "spin doctoring."  The creation of a character is a very similar procedure, alarming as that may seem.

These two disciplines combine to construct a funnel that sucks the customer's mind into a "world" they have "built" to house their fictional construct.

When it's done well, this technique can convince such a large percentage of viewers that some fallacious premise is true -- when it is not, and the authors of the commercial know it's not.

One such premise is that "cotton" is cooler to wear than artificial fibers.  The conviction that "science" shows it to be true has been driven so deep into the subconscious that people can verify this "fact" experimentally.  The subjective impression of coolness from cotton will conform to the assumption that it must be so.  Fact is, that "science" was commissioned by the cotton industry to prove that it's true because cotton was being driven from the market by competing fibers.

In our current culture, Science has become our "god."  Science is infallible (science says global warming is man-made so it's heresy to entertain the notion that this isn't yet proven).  Gods are infallible, and must be worshiped with out a doubt.  That need to worship something infallible is an inherent trait of human nature.  Read up on The Overton Window and all the science of Public Relations.

Here's a link to Wikipedia (incomplete article in need of fact-checking)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

-------------QUOTE--------------------------------
Edward Louis Bernays (November 22, 1891 – March 9, 1995) was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations".[1] He combined the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud.

He felt this manipulation was necessary in society, which he regarded as irrational and dangerous as a result of the 'herd instinct' that Trotter had described.[2] Adam Curtis's award-winning 2002 documentary for the BBC, The Century of the Self, pinpoints Bernays as the originator of modern public relations, and Bernays was named one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century by Life magazine.[3
---------------END QUOTE------------

Thus "Public Relations" is a field that grows out of one genius's deep rooted fear of the behavior of his fellow humans, and a terrible need to "control" that powerful and evil force called "humanity."

That is only one example of how active and powerful a well-driven fallacy can be in shaping subjective reality. 

But take a long view perspective on how Public Relations, Advertising, Spin Doctoring, and political campaigning tropes have shaped our current social reality, then take a long look at Bernays' life story.  You will see a real-world illustration of what I've been talking about in these posts -- the way the internal psychological circuitry of the main-character's mind projects that character's external reality, shapes his adversaries, and sets up the drama and its resolution. 

The writer must always create the Villain out of the substance of the Hero's internal conflict.  Or, you can do it the other way around, and create the Hero out of the Villain's inner problem.  However you go about doing it, the end product must show a match between the two of the story won't be plausible. 

One reason Romance as a genre has such a bad reputation is that Love is portrayed as "inexplicable."  It is inexplicable to the lovers!  But in a piece of fiction, it must be explicable if not explained. 

In a Romance, the two characters who fall in love are the "adversaries" or two poles of the conflict.  It's called "the battle of the sexes" for a reason, and all the "game" analogies also apply for that same reason -- the two are a pair, like Ahab and the Whale, or Bernays and The Public. 

Do that to a large enough group of people and they influence each other's solemn beliefs (the "herd instinct" referred to in that quote), and like "cotton is always the coolest fiber" popular beliefs become tangible reality.

Hence we have today's society composed of one "herd" that is absolutely convinced there is not and can never be such a thing as Happily Ever After and another herd (to which I belong) convinced that Happily Ever After is life's destination.

Here are some posts where we discussed and defined these two herds and how one individual reader can belong to either or both at any given moment.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/02/happily-ever-after.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/11/astrology-just-for-writers-part-11.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/02/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-5.html

Can a member of one herd join another?

I think so, but it's such a rare and improbable occurrence it makes a story!

In many instances in the above linked posts, I have noted that one reason the Romance genre is not given a lot of respect is that "Falling In Love" is always treated as an Emergency. 

Why would that concept be a source of scorn for Romance?

Here's the most often quoted instance of this concept in the media:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_said_never_let_a_good_emergency_go_to_waste

---------QUOTE--------------
 Rahm Israel Emanuel saying "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."
--------------END QUOTE------------

What exactly is being utilized in this principle?

The principle is the Overton Window -- which is the title of a novel by Glenn Beck about a PR firm and various characters involved in a PR project utilizing the concept Beck did not invent called The Overton Window.  An explanation of all that and what it has to do with learning to write is in this post which I mentioned above:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/10/glenn-beck-didnt-invent-overton-window.html

This principle of using emergencies to make people do things which are against a) their nature, b) their better judgment, c) their true Values, d) their religion or even e) are suicidal is a tool of the grifter, the confidence man, the scam artist.

It is a basic discovery at the root of the science of Public Relations or more accurately, Propaganda. 

It is a TRICK - a way of turning an adversaries strengths against them so they kill themselves and you don't have to get your hands dirty. 

That's why the genre's habit of portraying ROMANCE as an EMERGENCY -- "drop everything and pursue this one true love, and if that one true love gets away, life is over forever, so nothing you've dropped would ever be worth anything anyway" -- is viewed as a TRICK and instantly labeled as "impossible."  Why?  Because "emergencies" area always "tricks." 

Every other time in life's experience in the real world that people have dared to believe in Happily Ever After, it always turns out to be an instance of being fooled by a grifter.  So they don't believe it in fiction, and want nothing to do with such.

Why is Romance Genre singled out for scorn when all other fiction is even more unbelievable?

Romance Genre is special because everyone, in their heart of hearts, wants not just Romance, but entre into everlasting Love, solid and unbreakable Relationships, Family, enriched life.

Not only does everyone want it, everyone knows they are destined for it. 

Yet, time after time, in reality, they have had that promise of fulfillment snatched away.  The only possible psychological defense left is to believe staunchly that Happily Ever After is not possible.

Is Romance an Emergency?  When it happens, is it a life-or-death crisis in which one must drop everything and dash willy-nilly after the person who has evoked this vision of absolute fulfillment?

And if Romance is indeed an Emergency, then how should we treat it? 

How do we respond to Emergencies and Crises? 

Is there a malfunction in our society's training about how to respond to Emergencies and Crises?

Is our audience indoctrinated with some kind of fallacy that has warped our response to Emergencies? 

If so, what fallacy?  Where did it come from?  We, as writers, no doubt share that fallacy, so why bother to pinpoint it? 

The fallacy in our Emergency Response habits, if we can articulate it, can become our Theme, and the PINPOINTING of that fallacy  can become the plot of the breakout Romance that I've been talking about in this blog since I started looking for how Romance Genre can achieve the respect it deserves. 

We'll kick around some of these questions in Theme-Plot Integration: Part 2 Fallacy as Theme

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Darkover

Over Thanksgiving weekend, as usual, we attended the Darkover Grand Council convention held just north of Baltimore. Despite the name, this cozy con of a few hundred fans and writers isn’t restricted to Marion Zimmer Bradley’s work but includes the full range of science fiction and fantasy. They have an excellent dealer’s room. This year’s guest of honor was Nalo Hopkinson. She spent part of her GOH speech talking about her life as an inhabitant of multiple worlds (culturally) and her childhood in Jamaica. I wish you could have heard her describing her grandmother’s recipe for Christmas cake (fruitcake raised to the ultimate) drenched in rum. Hopkinson also spoke about the craft of writing and mentioned the tendency of new writers to describe scenes from above and outside with a “camera eye.” She emphasized the importance of multi-sensory imagery and getting inside the “skin” of the POV character.

One especially thought-provoking panel she was on inquired whether minority (racial, gender, or sexual orientation) characters in fiction should get a “pass.” In other words, should they be a “protected species” not allowed to die or otherwise be subjected to horrible experiences? As you’ll remember, that issue arose when Tara was murdered on BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. Some viewers attacked the show for killing off half of a romantic lesbian relationship. At the time, I thought they were sort of missing the point. NOBODY on BUFFY got to enjoy a happy relationship for long, and no character was safe. Anyway, the panel at Darkover pointed out the importance of whether the minority character is a token figure introduced mainly to die (or otherwise get sacrificed) or whether characters in that category are presented as an integral part of the fictional society and developed as believable individuals instead of stereotypes of a class.

I read a bit of my humorous story “Dusting Pixie” in the Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading, a group of authors from Broad Universe (www.broaduniverse.org), an organization devoted to the works of female writers of speculative fiction. Five authors read for ten minutes each. I participated in three panels: One was about how to make yourself start writing, keep writing, and become unstuck if you get stuck. It was fun and informative to listen to the problems and techniques of other writers. “Why a nonhuman?” discussed the pros and cons of writing from an alien viewpoint. The third dealt with alien romance and got very lively on the topics of communication, power relations, and whether we’re likely to encounter any nonhuman species with whom we can have sexual or even platonic love affairs. One panelist who happened to be in all three of these sessions wondered why authors feel it necessary to deal with racism or gender politics by displacing these themes onto imaginary creatures. He felt if we want to speculate about such issues, we should straightforwardly write about them in a realistic human context. I strongly disagree. In my opinion, a story about racism or other kinds of oppression set in our contemporary world might affect many readers as “same thing we’ve been hearing about forever.” “Fantastic racism” (as it’s called on TVtropes.org), on the other hand, has the potential to startle us and make us see our own species through fresh eyes.

Plus, for me, such fiction is its own excuse for being. Speculating about interaction with nonhuman intelligent beings is just FUN.

A steampunk track has become an established feature of Darkover, partly making up for the sad demise of the annual costume contest they used to have.

The high point of the weekend, of course, was the customary Saturday night Clam Chowder concert. Afterward, the Clams always gather at midnight with a large crowd to sing the Hallelujah Chorus in the atrium, which I listened to from the window of our hotel room.

You can read all about the con here:

Darkover

Margaret L. Carter,

Carter's Crypt

Science Fiction Romance Premise: What If You Could Control Mating Choices By Mathematics?

Headline for October 15, 2012:

NOBEL PRIZE in ECONOMICS goes to 2 Americans. 

Oddly, I'd done several blogs since 2009, nibbling at the edges of their work as basis for Science Fiction Romance novels.

"QUOTE FROM CNN: Roth and Shapley’s work focuses on finding the most efficient way to match parties in a transaction, whether it be students to schools or organ donors to recipients, according to the academy. Shapley used game theory to study matching models, and Roth built on them to make real-world changes to existing markets, including school choice and organ transplants, the academy said. Elements of their work are built into software that guides kidney donations in the United States, as well as in school choice models in New York, Boston, New Orleans and other U.S. cities, Roth told reporters Monday."
Nobel Prize for economics awarded to two U.S. economists - CNN.com
---END QUOTE---

Here's the CNN article:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/15/world/europe/sweden-nobel-economics/index.html

I’ve blogged about the “Overton Window” and Game Theory -- links below, but first  ....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window 

....which concepts are used to shape and direct the behavior of large groups of people (e.g. writing commercials for TV or promotion "trailers" for novels).  Here in this Prize Winning work that theory is used to shape and direct the connections among individuals — in a way that anyone would approve of (i.e. organ donor with recipient in need).  But what about if this technique is used to PREVENT associations-networks from forming (as in preventing organizations that oppose a government/dictator from forming, or perhaps to shape genetics by preventing certain couples from mating)? 

You see how SCIENCE connects to ROMANCE here?  Romance as a mathematical phenomenon is nothing new -- control of associations, putting the power of mating-choice into the hands of other humans is not new (Regency Romance) -- but making the power of mating-choice a scientific technology (internet dating sites) is pretty new, and successful enough to give people who want power over all humanity (to fix us, you know, because we are so broken we can't be trusted with free will choices) -- aha, now THAT IS NEW and worth exploring in fiction. 

There’s a theory that says an individual has a limited number (about a thousand) people they can really know and associate with, a limit built into the human brain, the upper limit of a village before families pick up and move away.

If that's true, then you can fill people up with associates you choose, and you prevent them from associating in ways you don’t approve of. 

WHAT A SCIENCE FICTION PREMISE!   Now use this connect-the-right-people technique to do "Match Making" and control human genetics?  Here's where I've been nibbling around the edges of this concept.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/04/wired-magazine-for-romance.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/10/glenn-beck-didnt-invent-overton-window.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/01/failure-of-imagination-part-4-teasing.html

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

The oddest thing about this Nobel Prize development is that it connects to my Science Fiction novel series, Sime~Gen.

Right now, there is a gaming company working at developing a Sime~Gen Videogame for handheld devices.  So I'm very involved in how GAMERS think.  That could be why I see the possibilities in this Nobel Prize.

To get news of this game as it develops, sign up for the free newsletter at:
http://simegengame.com

The main premise of Sime~Gen is that HUMAN NATURE CHANGES in such a way that "survival of the fittest" is redefined from the "fittest" being those who are best at killing to those who are best at Compassion. 

This premise does not affect individuals or characters in the stories so much as it affects the behavior of large groups of people.  The peak of the bell curve of distribution of the trait of compassion among human populations gets moved just a bit toward higher compassion -- and as a result, group behavior such as depicted in the novels FIRST CHANNEL  and its direct sequel CHANNEL'S DESTINY -- and eventually in the timeline ZELEROD'S DOOM -- makes sense.  It's in a new paper edition and ebook formats.



Each of the new paper editions (and the 4 new novels that make a total of 12 ) has both the internal chronology of the stories in the universe, and the publication order chronology in the front so you can choose which order to read them.

You can find them all on Amazon:
http://astore.amazon.com/simegen-20

And here is a recent article on genetic research which is being discussed on the Sime~Gen Group on Facebook:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/11/recent-human-evolution-2/

Quote from inside this article:

"Most of the mutations that we found arose in the last 200 generations or so. There hasn’t been much time for random change or deterministic change through natural selection,” said geneticist Joshua Akey of the University of Washington, co-author of the Nov. 28 Nature study. “We have a repository of all this new variation for humanity to use as a substrate. In a way, we’re more evolvable now than at any time in our history.”

So we're in a high (maybe peak) population explosion phase where permutations and combinations of genetic variations are going to be tested to select out survival traits.  What happens to this soup of genetic variation when these mathematicians apply their new Nobel Prize Winning theory of connecting individuals to the online dating game? 

Where do cell phones - smartphones that can monitor your vital signs - fit into this?  Where does GPS tracking fit into this? 

What usually happens when humans try to impose our pet philosophies on Nature? 

"But, wait!  There's More!"  The Sime~Gen Game being developed is set in the space age where Humanity creates a new kind of star-drive and disrupts the patterns of commerce among dozens of alien species who think THEY own the galaxy.  What happens when such Aliens try to impose their pet philosophies on Nature?  On humans? 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Next Big Thing

I agreed to take part in the Next Big Thing Blog Hop, a promotion happening right now in which authors answer questions about their current works in progress. It works sort of like a chain letter. Each author answers the interview questions on her own blog and “tags” the blog URLs of the author who invited her and a few other writers who will be participating next in line. So here goes:

What is your working title of your book?

PASSION IN THE BLOOD, which will probably change. It refers to the metaphor of vampiric heritage being “in the blood” for the heroine because of her maternal bloodline.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Partly from the ancient vampire in Anne Rice’s series who acts as guardian for her family line through the centuries. I got interested in the idea of a vampire who has vowed to protect the family of his first human lover, watches over them in secret for a century and a half, and falls in love with one of their descendants, the heroine.

What genre does your book fall under?

Vampire romance.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Maybe a young Louis Jourdan for the hero. I loved him as Dracula in the BBC miniseries.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

When Cordelia’s twin sister is kidnapped, Cordelia must turn to an old family friend for help and discovers, to her amazement, that not only is he a vampire, he knows secrets about her own parentage she never suspected.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I plan to submit it to an e-publisher that has released other works of mine.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

Three or four months altogether, which is typical for me. However, this one was unusual because I stopped working on it about two-thirds of the way and came back to finish it over a year later.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Maybe some of Amanda Ashley’s vampire romances (in her approach to the motif, not that I claim to be on her level!).

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Partly the desire to create a slightly unusual heroine for a vampire romance and give the vampire hero a plausible reason to find her attractive.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

My vampires belong to a naturally evolved species, not supernatural. The mother who abandoned the heroine and her twin sister, unknown to them, was a vampire, accounting for the psychic powers the heroine has.

Tags:

Celia Breslin

Amber Skyze

Berengaria Brown

I'll write about Darkover next week.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Is Your Romance Novel Really A TV Mini Series?

What is a TV Mini Series? 

How is a TV Mini Series different from a novel?  (or is it?) 

At the end of July, I did a post here on the lack of variety and reruns of TV Series.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/07/targeting-readership-part-5-where-is.html 

My cry was "Where Is Everybody?"  -- meaning that the coordinated shutdown of TV series (new and used) meant simply that the cable delivery system is in failure-mode, that audiences have packed up and moved away.

Of course, by September we had new shows gallore vieing for eyeballs, and there is more than I can watch in my sparse and shrinking TV hours.  But the point is still valid.  Those hiatus weeks never were that barren when there were only 3 channels that broadcast only 5-11 PM. 

And of course I know where everybody went.  Besides "gaming" -- people are leaving CABLE TV in droves.

What little TV Fiction time anyone has left these days is easily filled by "streaming" services like Netflix, Hulu, Roku, Amazon Instant Video.  Both movies and TV Mini Series are available very quickly on streaming services.  Those who watch story-format trends indicate that the TV Series episodic format with story-arc is still growing in popularity as people wait for an entire season of shows to go up on Netflix or Amazon or DVD and then watch them all at once. 

And now Amazon is making movies, and I know of at least one other Web TV Streaming company planning to leap into the movie business. 

One kind of property that lends itself remarkably well to to the TV Mini Series format  -- or any video streaming delivery of series like pod casts - is Romance.  Romance stories have both built-in suspense lines (will she/ won't she?) and broad relevance to the lives of anyone, any where and any time. 

So what is the structure of the TV Mini Series that makes it so suitable to the novel type story? 

Have you ever read a novel that is divided into Part I, Part II, Part III ?  Or perhaps Book 1, Book 2, Book 3? 

Why is that single volume divided instead of being published as three separate items to hold, a trilogy? 

The reasons are various, of course, but here is what to watch for as you analyze your favorites:

A) The Parts or Books are so deeply connected you can't read them as stand-alone or separate parts.
B) The Parts or Books are too short for modern distribution to handle commercially as separate units.
C) The Parts or Books are set in different places, about different people, or in separate times. 

Then there is the non-fiction TV Mini Series structure.  These are usually documentaries, often with some kind of agenda, sometimes political.  They try to summarize the history of events, or present new evidence.

Think of the J.F. Kennedy assassination documentaries, or the wonderful compendium of episodes covering World War II which was, as a TV Mini Series titled "Victory At Sea." 



There are several DVD parts on Amazon, and it's all available streaming.

There are 16 parts to this one, but Parts 1 to 4 run collectively 1 hour and 47 minutes.  These were originally broadcast on TV after being collected from Theater "short subjects" as half hour episodes -- half hour broken by commercials.

The collection tells the story of World War II in the PACIFIC THEATER, not Europe.  It's only half the story! 

Now think of all the really great biographies you've read.  Usually a Biography or Autobiography will cover the entire lifetime of a long-lived person.  But somehow the scattered events are collected in threads that display the cause-effect-connection (what I've termed the Because Line in novel structure in previous posts) among events separated by decades. 

When you can see the overview of an entire lifetime, all arranged to display the connections, somehow "life" begins to make sense. 



In actuality, a life such as Theodore Bikel's is a TV Miniseries more than it is a novel -- there's growing up, there's the war itself, there's being a refugee, there's pursuing an education in Theater in England, there's a Movie and TV Career, there's today which is totally amazing.  But taken as a whole, it's not a novel but a T.V. Mini Series. 

http://bikel.com

You can see that periodic yet flowing structure in his autobiography, THEO.

Is a biography or autobiography fiction or non-fiction? 

My answer to that is "hybrid" -- to be riveting and revealing, a biography has to have been constructed with the techniques of the fiction writer that I've been harping on in these blog posts.  You need to see the entire LIFE as A STORY -- but you also must compose that story out of the selected facts.  A biography or autobiography is not a transcription of every word a person said, everything they did from details of getting dressed in the morning to what they ate at every single meal. 

No, the story of a life is a STORY that happens to be factual.  And as I see it, it can't be a story without ROMANCE. 

What does that tell you about fiction?  About novels?  About romance novels in particular? 

We created the novel form from the basic "story" told around campfires -- which were pretty much morality tales and history re-packaged so children would remember it and tell their children.  Why do we remember history?  Because those who don't are doomed to repeat it.

So a TV Mini Series is a "series" first just as any piece of fiction is a "story" structured just exactly like real life.

We've spent some time this year studying our "real" world -- from politics to religion, and how to mix them - as a means of building fictional worlds that readers can immerse themselves in, feeling as if they are in a real world. 

So now we have the hang of building a fictional environment out of the components of reality shared with our readers.

Building a world is a huge task, which is why so many writers get lazy and just use reality.  Another popular form now is "Urban Fantasy" -- and again, the writer doesn't have to create anything except the elements that differ from the reader's everyday reality.  That also makes it easier for the reader to enter that world -- and it makes it easier to focus the story on the characters and their quirks.

But if you build an entire "world" for a piece of fiction, the only way to make it economical is to recycle it - to use that same set of rules and inventions in other stories.

When you change the STORY but keep the WORLD the same -- you have a series. 

Sometimes, as in a biography, the character is the same person at different stages of life, with accumulating experience redirecting decisions and life-policies.  An example could be the before and after of a drug addict.  Or you might consider the before and after of a single character who has lost an enormous amount of weight (say 150 lbs).

The TV Mini Series structure would then start with the character as a child, perhaps chubby but normally so, do a second episode about the Teen who is in angst and misery gaining weight, a third episode in college with all the rejection and things the overweight person couldn't do leading maybe to an eating disorder, ultra emaciation, then ballooning weight gain.  Then an episode about the therapy undergone to address this horrendous problem. 

Then ending with an episode about the person attaining a normal weight.  And a final episode proving the normal weight was maintained, and summing up what went wrong that caused this weight syndrom, and how fixing what went wrong actually caused other things in that life to go "wrong."  All of the "right" and "wrong" of weight issues are value judgements which make dynamite material (I mean explosive!) for fiction because they are so real in life. 

Such a TV Mini Series could be focused on ROMANCE -- the deep, committed and fulfilling romantic relationships of an extremely overweight person might be a healthy romantic relationship which would simply not survive the weight-loss efforts because it would be inappropriate to the thinner individual, who might then be miserable with loneliness until some other true-mate came along. 

How weight affects the establishment and maintaining of a healthy relationship could be a dynamite theme for a story, but you couldn't cover the nuances in a 90 minute feature film.

A "life" like that has so many phases, each with a theme, each theme related to previous life-themes and generating successive life themes -- and that is the essence of the structure of a TV Mini Series. 

Of course today, when you think TV Mini Series, you should think in terms of video delivery, of YouTube video trailers, and Kickstarter funding.

I recently got into a discussion of music in general which triggered a memory of this long-ago TV Series which wasn't a "TV Mini Series" but had a very long run.  It was informative, tackled the hottest topics of the day, illuminated issues, and educated viewers.  This was so long ago that TV viewers were expected to have an attention span much longer than those who've grown up on Sasame Street. 

I remember many of these shows vividly, but not all of them. Mostly I remember the feeling of anticipation, the reveling in the sheer joy of discovery, and most of all the introductory music and image collage.

Remembering the music, I rummaged in my mind for the title of "that old TV Series" -- and after a few days what surfaced was the word OMNIBUS.

But I couldn't remember the moderator, though I do remember how incredibly impressive he was.

So I googled Omnibus TV Series and came to the wikipedia page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnibus_(U.S._TV_series)

that said Alistair Cooke. It's a very short entry but reminded me why the series was so impressive. It won a lot of really hard-to-win awards.




If you are looking for a TV Series on DVD to share with your kids over dinner on Sunday night, try this series.

If you want to study exactly how to put together a non-fiction TV Series that will be remembered for decades, get this DVD.

Now don't forget this is very primitive video because they didn't have much back then, and it's amazing it still exists. It's the material and presentation -- the title, the music, the manner of the moderator, but most of all the "make-the-most-of-limited-means" production.

The production values may look laughable now, but look at how this was funded by grant money -- it was an exceptionally low budget creation that relied wholly on content and elegance of technical execution.

If you are aiming to produce something for YouTube or to write a low-budget movie script, this TV Series is where to start studying how it's done. Penetrating and Memorable.

Here's from the Amazon page.  This is not the whole series of shows -- but a Mini Series excerpted. 

-----------QUOTE-------------
The People That Fascinated Us
The Places That Defined America

The Golden Age of Television's most distinguished production, Omnibus brought sophistication, refinement and sparkling intelligence to a national audience. Featuring such luminaries as Alistair Cook, Don Hewitt and Richard Leacock, this historic 2-disc collection features fourteen segments (broadcast between the years 1952 to 1960) that examine the iconic people and places that shaped American pop culture and society.

Includes
DISC 1 - PEOPLE
1. Philippe Halsman
2. William Faulkner
3. Frank Lloyd Wright
4. Pearl Buck - "My Several Worlds"
5. E.B. White - "A Maine Lobsterman"
6. Sugar Ray Robinson visits Stillman's Gym
7. James Thurber - Man and Boy
8. How the F-100 Got Its Tail
9. Leonard Bernstein's Musical Travelogue

DISC 2 - PLACES
1. The New York Times
2. Toby and the Tall Corn
3. Grand Central: Portrait of a Railroad Terminal
4. Dr. Seuss Explores the Museum that Ought to Be
5. New York's Night People

Also includes 20 page booklet with written contributions by Richard Leacock, Rosemary Thurber, Edgar S. Walsh and the Archive of American Television
-----------END QUOTE------------

I suspect this bottomless well of HISTORY is one big place "everybody went" -- that giant swaths of what used to be "the TV Audience" is now the "Streaming Audience" and people are exploring the wonder of old movies, the wealth of new releases rushed to DVD and streaming, and elegant old TV shows resurrected from the vaults. 

If you want to write a TV Mini Series, do something that will be remembered like Omnibus, or Victory At Sea, and encapsulate a slice of the reality of the 2012 world, the 20-teens as it were.  What you do may not be valued until decades from now, but when it is, then that will be where "everybody went."

Take for example the TV Mini Series I outlined on the issue of weight.  Make the story about Romance in today's world for the overweight woman -- and twenty years from now when a stem-cell genetic fix is available and nobody is overweight any more, your story will be a classic avidly watched on whatever replaces streaming video.  What a strange, bizarre, even cruel world we live in today.  DOCUMENT IT IN FICTION. 

Or maybe a lot sooner than 20 years!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14Biology-t.html  a news story about do-it-yourself at-home genetic engineering. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Google Mistakes And Conspiracy Theories As Inspiration

According to Huffington Post articles, there are new (CIA-built?) islands that exist, but do not officially exist, and sandy islands that exist on Google maps, but do not "really" exist when curious ship captains try to find them.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/24/sandy-island-doesnt-exist_n_2184535.html?icid=maing-grid7|main5|dl1|sec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D237724

One never knows what to believe in these days of photoshopping.... but inquiring minds could come up with explanations. A really big pod of green whales. A floating raft of green debris. A spaceship. A rising and falling caldera, similar to the one in Yellowstone only in the middle of a shallow part of the ocean instead of in a landlocked National Park. Something Dr. No. Or was it Moonraker?

If your own imagination fails, check out the Comments. There are a number of highly imaginative denizens on the internet who will comment on stories, and thanks to the rabid proponents of Privacy and a free internet, they could never be traced. So, their plot points for a potential speculative story are fair game, I should think.
One cannot copyright ideas, only the expression of ideas.

Happy Bargain-Hunting to those who shop!
Rowena Cherry
SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/ 

Can Animals Be Persons?

Here’s a provocative article on animal rights and the definition of “personhood”:
When Does an Animal Count as a Person?
As one of the quoted experts points out, defining “person” in a way that includes some animals has pitfalls, mainly the hazard that the definition would exclude some human beings (as, in fact, bioethicist and animal rights radical Peter Singer deliberately does, if I understand him accurately). Can we have "degrees" of "personhood," so that dolphins and chimps can be included on a sort of sliding scale?
This weekend I’ll be attending the Darkover Grand Council, as usual. Happy Thanksgiving to all!
Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Guest Post Experiences From Twitter: RIXSHEP on Cons and RPG

On #scifichat on twitter, in September, we set a topic for convention experiences for the following week, and one of the more interesting twit-folk @rixshep found me on Facebook and gave me the following information to relay during the next week's chat -- when he would not be able to attend.

Since RPG and especially online RPG, Star Trek, with a counterpoint undertone of my own Sime~Gen Novels, are going to become an ongoing topic on this blog next year, I wanted to give you these URLs.

---------QUOTED EXCHANGE FROM FACEBOOK----------

Howdy, Ms. Lichtenberg!

I know I don't get to #scifichat as much these days, or to your blog page, as much as I would like. Probably won't improve much in the near future. But, considering next week's #scifichat topic, I wanted to pass some items along to you, that I thought you might appreciate.

Back when I had a lot more time, I used to do a lot of role play on a site known as The Keep. Chat based stuff. Over time, I created a couple of rooms and characters that got a lot of mileage.

One was a typical Dungeons and Dragons / Forgotten Realms type fantasy tavern that was very successful. It was called The Prattling Pirate Inn and Tavern. The other was a scifi tavern that never got used as well, imo. It was The Stardust Lounge on Starbase 12. This one is based on Starbase 12 from Ishmael by Barbara Hambly, and the lounge itself is loosely based on Draco Tavern by Larry Niven.

(By the way, Yesterday's Son by Crispin and Ishmael by Hambly are two of my favorite Trek novels. Another big one with me is How Much for Just the Planet? by John Ford. It is a parody musical, and one of the characters in it is Ann Crispin!)

For various reasons, I think you would appreciate some of what was done with these fantasy/scifi taverns. So, here are the links to these two places. I think you will like the scifi one better.

The Prattling Pirate Inn:
http://www.freewebs.com/jon_teela/

The Stardust Lounge at Starbase 12:
http://www.nexxushost.com/rpg/thekeep/whois_popup.php3?L=english&power=weak&U=Starbase12

I will be traveling all day next Friday, so may not get to participate, and if I do, I won't have any of my files available.

Meanwhile, good luck with the contract work on the game!

Rick Shepherd / rixshep
Prattling Pirate Inn
www.freewebs.com

JL: Oh, thank you! I'm going to put those links into the aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com blog, if you don't mind.

Rick: Not at all. The link for the starbase is in The Keep, and it goes away after a couple of weeks, if I don't renew it. Eventually I will get it added as a distinct page on the other website where I keep the pic of the Prattling Pirate Inn. Hope you like them! Btw, I was thrilled to hear you had a hand in Ann Crispin getting started! Very nice!
-----------Chat Conversation End--------------

You can follow Rick on twitter as @rixshep

He mentioned YESTERDAY'S SON by A. C. Crispin because I had mentioned on this week's chat that I had agented that book -- a topic which came up because the guest for the chat was:

James Kahn  who was a (terrific) guest on #scifichat today.

http://www.jameskahnwordsandmusic.com/

He is @thatjameskahn on twitter

Here's the transcript of the chat:
http://flyingpenpress.com/DavidRozansky/blog/scifichat-script-120921/  

He has a new book out titled World Enough And Time.  Here is a whole page on Amazon with his Star Wars novels and other great stuff: 

James Kahn on Amazon

And I connected James Kahn with one of my favorite talk show hostesses, Lillian Cauldwell.  She wrote to him thusly:

------excerpt------
Dear Mr. Kahn:

Jacqueline Lichtenberg recommended that I contact you and see if
you're interested in doing an interview over PWRTALK's airwaves.
You can find the station at http://pwrtalk.ning.com and http://pwrtalkondemand.com  or the newly upgraded http://pwrtalklive.com/

In the first six months of 2012, PWRTALK received an additional one million and one-half
new listeners from RETWEETS alone.
The network is heard in over 200 countries and our largest demographic base is college
and university students worldwide.

The following days and times are available for an interview. All times are Eastern.
All programs are LIVE, 30 minutes, RECORDED, and posted on the website,
social media, and heard for the next 3 months via PWRTALK's automatic
radio software. Over a 3 month period, your interview will be heard over 400
times. You can include a 30 second commercial advertising your books should
you wish.


Best regards,
Lillian S. Cauldwell
---------end excerpt ----------

Lillian's show will be running Black Friday author-specials Nov 22, 2012.  http://pwrtalklive.com/

Lillian included a number of times, and he chose Monday, October 8th, 2012.  So now, in November, that interview should be available in the on demand section at Lillian's website. 

And James Kahn wrote back to me thanking me for connecting him to Lillian and saying we should keep in touch.  We're planning to meet at Worldcon in San Antonio. 


Now let's see who else we can connect to whom!  It's all about networking. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Nature Wars

Here’s an article about conflicts caused by the overlapping of our cities and suburbs with the territories of wild animals, an unintended consequence of successful conservation and wildlife re-introduction efforts:

America Gone Wild: Nature Wars

This sentence really surprised me:

“It is very likely that in the eastern United States today more people live in closer proximity to more wildlife than anywhere on Earth at any time in history.”

But, then, it also came as a revelation to me when I learned, years ago, that what looked to me like the “wilderness” of Shenandoah National Park actually comprises new growth forest that sprang up after the human inhabitants were relocated for the establishment of the park.

I’m reminded of the recurrent controversy over bear hunts in western Maryland. The people of the western counties complain about the black bear nuisance they have to live with and want the beasts legally culled. I found it sort of boggling when I discovered that being “overrun” by bears equated to about 400 of them in the entire state. Of course, they aren’t evenly distributed, but clustered in the mountainous regions. A few years ago, a state legislator from one of the western districts introduced a bill (as a symbolic protest only, needless to say) mandating that bears should be introduced into every county in the state. In other words, “if you like bears so much, take some of ours.”

Some people in our own area complain about deer nibbling on their garden plants. We have deer in the park adjacent to our neighborhood, but they seldom wander onto residential streets, and we’ve never caught them grazing in our yard, so I still get a small thrill at a glimpse of a deer. Nevertheless, I can sort of understand the attitude of people who call them “rats with hooves”—while I don’t like the idea of having them killed unless they’re going to be eaten. In some cases, I tend to think the animals were here first, so we should adjust to them, not vice versa. Opportunistic species such as deer, however, have infiltrated some spaces where they didn’t live before we created attractive habitats for them.

A thought-provoking example of the quandaries we face in adjusting to “aliens” among us right here on present-day Earth.

We have a fox that sometimes takes refuge under our house. (Unless it's different foxes every time.) He or she makes odd noises but doesn't do any harm.

By the way, I recently launched my first foray into Kindle self-publication, DAYMARES FROM THE CRYPT, a small collection of horror and fantasy verse I produced in print many years ago. It contains the thirteen poems from the original chapbook plus three “bonus” pieces and has a lovely, eerie cover. It’s priced at 99 cents, the lowest Amazon allows:

Daymares from the Crypt

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Chicon7 Con Report

Chicon7 was the World Science Fiction Convention for 2012 held the old traditional time of Labor Day weekend.

Here is a picture of my badge:

The cap is for the N3F, the National Fantasy Fan Federation, the first fan organization I ever joined.  It was founded by the founder of SFWA (Science Fiction And Fantasy Writers of America), damon knight.  that's correct - he always wrote his name with small letters, not capitals.  I'm now a Life Member of SFWA, too but don't have a cap. 

Note, I didn't collect a whole strip of ribbons as many people do (volunteer workers get ribbons, and various parties and causes hand out ribbons).   Here is Anne Pinzow's badge with a short-strip of ribbons - neat ones though.  Note the black one and the yellow one.

At each Worldcon, winners of sites for future conventions are announced. 

You can find the current worldcon's website by checking http://worldcon.org -- the only con website I seem to remember easily. 

2013 will be in San Antonio, TX; 2014 in London.

When Worldcon is not in North America, another convention is held called NASFIC - North American Science Fiction Convention. 

http://nasfic.org/ is the website listing links to the current NasFic when there is one -- though it often takes a while for that site to be updated. 

You can buy memberships online using credit cards and sometimes paypal at the convention's own website.  Travel, Hotel, and local eateries, handicap access, and convention program and volunteer (nobody gets paid to run these Events) opportunities are gradually filled in on the website, along with pdf copies of the progress reports from the committee. 

In 2014 NasFic will be in Tempe, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix reached via the main Phoenix airport PHX, Sky Harbor. 

This will be run by the organization that runs Leprecon and boy do they put on a great convention!
I plan to make it to this NasFic, and my writing partner, Jean Lorrah, is looking to make it to London. 

Worldcon is longer than most SF cons - 5 days instead of 3 or 4.  It has its own traditional internal calendar -- Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday "of Worldcon" -- whatever the calendar dates, those are the designations of "when" something happens.  There are also traditional time-slots for certain Events -- such as the Masquerade where costumes are presented on stage, and The Hugos, where a number of writing awards voted by members of Worldcon are announced and given out.

So, I arrived at Chicon7 late on Wednesday, rooming with my writing partner Jean Lorrah and with Anne Pinzow who is a professional journalist and was second in charge of the Press Room for Chicon7. 

I was on an adventure from the start of this trip as I had upgraded to a smartphone and was delighted with the various tools I now had available to deal with travel details and communicate with the people I needed to meet.

I knew it would be a great convention immediately when the bunch of us swarmed down to Con Registration and found a line waiting to get credentials.  PEOPLE is a real good sign for a con.

The Program Participant line was empty, though, and the fellow sitting there mournfully revealed that the "packets" for Program Participants hadn't arrived.  "Packets" are envelopes with your final official program items, a sticker for the back of your badge containing said program items, a program participant ribbon, instructions for panel moderators, general instructions about the Green Room, Program Operations Room, sometimes these days phone numbers and other data.  Conventions that hold successful "meet-n-greet" events for pros and fans usually include free drink tickets for the pros.  ChiCon7 didn't, and I think it's Chicago's "corkage" and union fees that jacked the price up beyond what a convention can afford.  They did hold a meet-n-greet at a nearby planetarium, but very few pros turned up.  It was at dinner time, and there was no real food served.

But as we milled about disappointed we couldn't get our program participant packets, someone called "Jacqueline!" from the L-Z section of the general Registration line, and suddenly the bunch of us were being handed our badges, lanyards to wear the badges, and a bag with pocket program, general program book, and we were off and running.

We now had hotel maps, our tentative program mail-outs from before the con had room names, so we went and hunted up the various places we'd need to be then found food and tucked in for the night.

We hit the ground running Thursday morning, but I don't remember what we did, just that I was already getting hoarse from talking constantly by the afternoon.  I think Jean Lorrah did a panel -- I recall the substance of the discussion but not exactly when it was.  Jean was brilliant.  I only had to remind her to mention the Star Trek novels she had done for Pocket appropos of the topic of collaborating.  TV Spinoff is "collaborating" because you must work within parameters set by others.

Then in the afternoon, Jean and I sat at the SFWA table in the dealer's room where I took this picture for the fellow sitting beside us who pointed and wished he had a picture.
A Helium Balloon in the Dealer's Room

The convention provided a wi-fi connection via the Hyatt Regency's own system for "functions" -- and it was not sufficient and not available in many locations.  The Hyatt is two tall towers set over 3 deep underground layers of huge flex-spaces where trade shows are held.  And there's underground access to tunnels lined with shops and eateries, though some restaurants and grocery stores I recall from past years are gone.  Those lower areas had very spotty coverage.  The lobby and ground level areas had fine 3G coverage, but the wi-fi was slow -- so I was delighted my new smartphone gave me email, texts, voice phone, flight updates, weather, everything I needed to whiz through the immense convention area.

I was able to take that photo of the helium balloon above and just email it (using 3G) to the fellow who wanted it, and later to post it directly to Facebook for the Sime~Gen Group folks to get a laugh out of.

Also in scoping out the lay of the land, I realized I'd never remember all the businesses in the underground to tell my roommates about, so I photographed the list and the map which were posted on the wall by the entrance.


   That is a list of businesses which I was able to enlarge on my phone to the point where people I showed the phone screen to could read the words clearly.



Is a map of this huge area.


Mostly, I walked and talked on Thursday.  Jean had a reading at 4PM which I missed, and she read the opening of a new Sime~Gen novel she's working on.  I got to read it later -- it's going to be good! 

Friday was even busier.  Jean had a 10:30 panel, and I arrived at the noon panel I was moderating on time.  The topic was how we haven't gotten the flying cars and personal jet-packs Science Fiction promised us, but instead we got Cell Phones -- smartphones and the internet.  We had a nice spectrum of opinion on the panel, including the point of view that we have indeed gotten jet packs and flying cars, but they haven't been commercialized (yet). 

Right in the middle of the second round of comments from the panelists about how cell phones are changing the way we behave and accomplish things -- with people in the audience already putting their hands up with questions and comments -- my cell phone rang.  I'd forgotten to turn it off.  The room chuckled. 

I grabbed it, saw it was Anne Pinzow who was working the press room (a reveal my old phone would not have performed), answered with, "Not now I'm moderating a panel. Bye." and hung up. 

I shrugged a "Q.E.D." shrug at the audience.  The room burst out laughing. 

It was a precious moment, but I was thinking, "Press Room Calling Me????"   Jean and I had put our names on the list of authors available for media interviews, but Anne being professional wasn't about to promote us over anyone else.  We already had one web radio interview lined up for Sunday morning - more on that later.  An interview would reach more people than were in that overstuffed, standing room only, crowded room.  But there was no time to think about that.

Anne called Jean Lorrah - who was in the audience and went out to answer.

I continued with the panel topic, which was intimately related to my big news of the convention -- that we had a Game Producer interested in producing a Sime~Gen based RPG for handhelds such as cell phones and pads.

To get news about that Game, you can sign up for an infrequent newsletter at
http://simegengame.com 

Or join the Sime~Gen Group on Facebook.
http://www.facebook.com/groups/121838917889519/

Or follow the newsletter blog:
http://www.out-territory.blogspot.com/

It was an excellent panel and I handed out quite a few flyers afterward.

Then I was off to the convention's general autographing area where I was supposed to be from 3-4:30. 

Jean caught up with me and said Anne had a web-radio interview lined up for us at 4PM.  I cut out of the autographing a bit early, and we were a bit late getting all the way up to the Press Room, but got there as the media fellow was going from impatient to disappointed.

We set up in the Press Office because the Interview Room was occupied, and then we found out the topic was the legal aspects of being a writer in this day and age.  We got off to a slow start, but after a couple of questions Jean and I got into our duo-act and talked his ear off about Star Trek fanzines, the changes in the copyright laws, the relationship between Star Trek and Sime~Gen which also has a huge amount of fan fiction written by fans, and much about what a new writer in this new era has to know about contracts and law.

I haven't heard from him, so I don't know if that interview has aired.  I do know he has a lot of material to air since his partner on this webcast was at Dragoncon while he was covering Worldcon. 

I did use my cell phone again, though.  Anne had his card, so instead of writing down and losing his contact information, I photographed his card.  I was able to finger-spread the image big enough to read the print on the card.  I think I'm in love with my smartphone! 

After that, we were pooped, but couldn't fold up for the night yet because at 8PM there was the Sime~Gen Party.

One of the fans known as Kaires arranged the party and did a terrific job of publicizing it.  It went way past the stated mid-night, and the room roared.  Kaires and some of the others greeted people and gave them information about Sime~Gen's most recent (4 novels) publications and the Facebook Group

But I was busy introducing our newest acquaintance, the Game Developer, to various people I thought should be on the development team.  The connections worked, and these guys all hit it off splendidly with each other while observing the fans of the older novels discovering the brand new, never before published, novels -- or asking for more.

And of course many of them know each other and used to party to rendezvous before heading out to more parties.

Because the party ran so late, we got off to a slow start Saturday, and I spent the entire day in the Green Room talking with the Game Developer and the folks I'd introduced him to -- not about the plans for the Sime~Gen Game so much as just about all the science fiction loves we have in common (besides Star Trek that's a whole lot of stuff!)

Sunday started with the web radio interview with PWRTalk which also has video. 

I had arranged for the Game Developer, and the reader of the audiobook HOUSE OF ZEOR, Michael Spence, to join in this interview, and it worked out perfectly as we bounced the conversational ball around.  

I did another panel at 3PM and at 4:30 I had a "Reading" scheduled.  I have listened to many authors read their own work -- mostly with very mixed results unless the author has acting training.  I don't -- and I have a very bad voice, and just don't read aloud well.  So I dragooned Michael Spence into reading the first chapter of House of Zeor which he had recorded.  I was surprised how many people showed up -- for the most part author readings don't draw crowds (again unless the author is known to have stage training) -- and at first they were disappointed I wasn't going to give them another new Sime~Gen novel. 

However, by the time Michael got a couple paragraphs into HOUSE OF ZEOR, they were captivated.  Only a couple had heard the recorded audible.com version.  When Michael reads this book, it's a totally different book than you've read dozens of times to yourself! 

Currently, Michael is working on recording Marion Zimmer Bradley's first novel, SWORD OF ALDONES for audible.com and I can hardly wait for that.  He's done another Bradley title I love BRASS DRAGON too.  Readers of this blog know how I rave about Marion Zimmer Bradley, my writing mentor. 

On audible.com you can listen to samples of the titles before you buy.

After that final reading, we went to find something to eat then back to the room to pack and get ready to pull out the following morning. 

It was a busy convention, but all the while I was thinking that we were putting together the group that will work on the Sime~Gen Game at the same Event (a Chicago Worldcon) where Star Trek made it's debut.  How can you beat that?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Why a Non-Human?

That’s the title of one of the panels I’ll be on at this year’s Darkover con. The discussion topic inquires about the advantages and problems of writing from a nonhuman viewpoint. How would you answer this question?

In creating nonhuman characters, I find it useful to draw analogies with animals. The range of senses, abilities, and behavior found right here in Earth’s ecosystem is amazingly varied. A werewolf, naturally, can take on nonhuman traits by acting and thinking like a mundane wolf—for example, living in a pack structure and having a heightened sense of smell. The werewolf pack in one of Tanya Huff’s vampire novels follows the real-world wolf pattern by allowing only the alpha male and female to breed. The Shadowspawn, the vampire-shapeshifter-sorcerers in S. M. Stirling’s A TAINT IN THE BLOOD and COUNCIL OF SHADOWS, are described as hominids that evolved to become more like cats. They have the solitary tendencies of most felines and enjoy playing with their prey like cats. The naturally evolved vampires of Melanie Tem’s DESMODUS are basically giant, intelligent bats in everything except their quasi-humanoid body shape. Merfolk might have the biology and social structure of seals or dolphins. For instance, think of Madison in the movie SPLASH, shattering a store display full of TV screens with her near-ultrasonic voice.

Members of one of the quirkiest “alien” races in fantasy literature, the Nac Mac Feegle of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series (based loosely on the pixies of folklore), live in mounds that function something like beehives, termite colonies, or mole rat dens. Only one female, the queen, breeds. She’s married to the chief of the clan and gives birth to hundreds of children, all sons except for one daughter. So all but one of her subjects are either her sons or her brothers-in-law. The daughter, upon maturity, leaves home to become queen mother of a different mound.

TVTropes.org has a page titled “Planet of Hats,” describing worlds inhabited by aliens who each have one defining characteristic that applies to all people of that species. For instance, in the Star Trek universe the Ferengi became defined by greed for profit and the Klingons as a Proud Warrior Race. An alien species and culture can be constructed by expanding upon traits of a real nation or ethnic group on Earth. A good writer, naturally, will create individualized, three-dimensional characters and avoid making every member of the fictional culture identical to the prevailing stereotype.

The main challenge of writing from an alien POV, of course, is to make the character feel alien while also retaining enough familiar traits to make him, her, or it comprehensible and sympathetic to a human reader. Drawing upon oddities of mundane animals’ biology and behavior is one way to make this balance work; using patterns from lesser-known Earth cultures, with variations, is another.

These are a few of my random thoughts about the panel topic. Does anybody have other suggestions?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Dialogue Part 5: How To Write Liar Dialogue

 Last week we reviewed several posts here on Dialogue. 

http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/10/dialogue-parts-1-4-listed.html

This is a craft technique essential to characterization, plotting scene structure, creating an atmosphere, describing settings and objects in the setting, planting clues to the mystery.  It is not a good tool for narration or exposition.  In fact, it bores the reader right out of the story when used for exposition.

One way to use dialogue for exposition (talking ABOUT the theme) is to "show don't tell" the theme by detailing scenes in which characters lie to each other.  Nothing explicates a character's stance on "right and wrong" more clearly than their lies, tall tales, and the mannerisms accompanying the lie.  When, where, to whom, and why they lie creates a totally "off the nose" exposition on the ethics and morality of the world in which the characters live.

This being Election day, it's appropriate to consider the thesis of the the non-fiction book "You Can't Lie to Me" by Janine Driver.

Here is the book:


We all know what a hot, sexy topic lies can be -- it's a core topic in every Romance.  Does "I love you" really mean anything at all?  Why is it so IMPORTANT to hear those words?  Why does it change everything in a relationship? 

The thesis of this book may have something to unlock that mystery.

I've noticed something studying the astrological natal charts of Politicians.  Those elected to major offices all seem to be having a lifetime PEAK of solar arc contacts that indicate sexiness, interest in love, and artistic abilities. 

That could be WHY we see so many politicians embroiled in sexual infidelity and exploits that are otherwise inexplicable considering the stakes they are playing for in life. 

It's about POWER.  When the heavens open up and POUR into a human being, when you reach a time in life when sheer POWER flows through you -- it can crack open any flaw in your character.  Strengths become weakness. 

If you are given power you are not inwardly trained (from the cradle, trained and disciplined (Saturn) ) to handle, that power splashes out of the appropriate internal channel within the character and damages other parts of the character.  It's a basic principle of magic and explained quite clearly in astrology.

Hence we have the saying "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely."  I've never believed that and I still don't.  But it is an observed fact -- at least when observing from the outside of people.

I don't think power corrupts.  I think that when the character hasn't been developed by discipline as a child, (being raised to "power" as the old aristocracy raised a child to be King), what we observe from the outside as a "change" (i.e. corruption of values) is no change at all.  It's the illumination of what was there. 

If the "insulation" on a wire isn't strong enough, and you run too much current through it, the insulation melts and the current leaks out and causes a FIRE - houses  burn down because of frayed wiring.

A character flaw is like that -- the "insulation" on the circuits is built during childhood by discipline and the gradual increasing of the amount of personal power the individual must manage -- taking consequences for mistakes.

A PERSON is both born and raised -- there are inherent specifications on the insulation in the internal circuitry, but that insulation can become "frayed" by "life" (by not being raised to have a strong character).

Each of us has a limit to what we can handle in terms of "power."  Each limit is different.  And one can "get away with" carrying more than the limit for years and years -- but just like frayed wiring, a power-surge can burn off the insulation and cause a short-circuit, cause a "fire."

Understanding that gives a Romance writer (science fiction, Paranormal Romance or otherwise) an edge in creating a character who deceives or manipulates, betrays or uses another character, using the power of sexuality to convince someone of a lie -- or lying to themselves.

This is a book that can explain it in such a way that a writer can write a character who is carrying way too much POWER and has become "corrupt" by it -- has lost cohesiveness in their control of power.

I do not accept most of the assumptions in this book as having much to do with our everyday reality, but it can be useful to writers creating fictional characters.  You will observe this phenomenon in real people.  It is there.  But personally, I don't believe it has to be there.  Raised well, most people will not find that they function this way.

What way?

The thesis of this book is that physiologically, those who have power OVER the person they're talking to (parent to child, employer to employee, Elected Official to Constituent, Lover to love-starved lover) feel no guilt or remorse when saying something they know to be untrue.  Men say "I love you" to have sex with a woman, and feel no guilt if it's not true as the woman thinks it must be.

They feel no guilt because they are emotionally focused on what they have to gain by making you believe the lie.

Liars who have less power than the person they are speaking to exhibit physiological and detectible mannerisms of guilt (think of a 5 year old caught with hand in the candy jar denying stealing the candy). 

Liars who have more power (President Obama making a speech right as Seal Team 6 was heading in to get Bin Laden) think only of the benefits not what there is to lose and actually don't have the brain chemicals in play that a guilty liar would. 

I don't want someone who CAN LIE in charge of any kind of power.  This book says the POWER ITSELF causes the effect that creates the ability to lie undetected.  Thus an elected official who feels powerful for the first time in his life thinks he can sneak off to have an affair then confront his wife WITHOUT TWITCHING in guilt -- confront the voters and say perfectly straight that he didn't have sex with that woman (remember Bill Clinton). 

So if this book is correct, creating a social structure that has any nexus of POWER in it anywhere (i.e. the man is king of his castle and obliged to beat his wife), actually breeds expert liars.

Therefore we have to decentralize everything and destruct all the crossing points (desks) of Power.  Nobody can be trusted to make decisions for other people, or decisions that affect and direct others. 

That's a science fiction premise you could base a long series on. 

But what if we select and raise certain children to have that strong insulation that can carry that much current and not melt down and cause a brain-fire of power-madness? 

That, too, is a science fiction premise that could support a long series of Romances. 

I suspect the fascination with Regency Romance novels is based on this, as is the Fantasy field depicting Kings, Kingdoms, Aristocracy, Barons, Dukes.  Writers have been groping for this book's premise for some time.

What happens to a PERSON when handed POWER?  How can we prevent absolute power from corrupting absolutely?

Are we helpess in the face of human nature?  Or can we produce (as bees produce a Queen to lay eggs) individuals specialized to handling power without getting burned? 

Here's the book to read to learn to write the dialogue for such a series of Romance novels.



Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg

Information vs. Data

Did everybody have a fun and spooky Halloween?

I'm pre-posting this on Sunday in case the Frankenstorm, aka Hurricane Sandy, knocks out our electricity between now and Thursday. A scary prospect because we have a well, whose pump runs on electricity, so no power means no running water. The last time we lost electricity, for almost 4 days after a storm earlier this year, our portable generator worked reliably. We're hoping it will do the same this time or, better yet, that we won't need it.

A column by Jean Marbella in today's Baltimore SUN discusses the media focus on the approaching hurricane. Everywhere we turn, we hear and see warnings and advice about how to deal with the potential disaster. In winter, the similar public reaction to every predicted snowstorm in this area is a running joke. (Time to stock up on bread and toilet paper!) Marbella asks whether the modern 24-7 news blitz at times like this gives us more information or just more anxiety. We feel compelled to pursue every minute-by-minute update. "But have you noticed," she muses, "how the more you read these days, the less you're reassured?" She also quotes Richard Saul Wurman, who wrote a book about "Information Anxiety" back in 1989, on the distinction between "information" and "data." Data alone, mere facts, don't benefit us without context and interpretation. Facts alone, a deluge of unprocessed raw material, can overwhelm instead of informing. True information "is power. It reduces your anxiety," says Wurman.

I'm grateful for the Internet and the up-to-the-minute weather forecasts and event closing notices we have access to nowadays. The media have improved our public and personal response to Nature's vicissitudes in ways I wouldn't want to live without. But how much news is too much?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt