Theme-Dialogue Integration - Part 2 - What's Eating Her by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Dialogue Integration
Part 2 
What's Eating Her
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Here is Part 1 of this Theme-Dialogue series, What's Eating Him?

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/09/theme-dialogue-integration-part-1-whats.html

Last week, Loreful, the videogame company developing a Sime~Gen RPG style videogame taking Sime~Gen into the space age, pitting humanity against aliens in a galaxy spanning war, launched a Kickstarter to fund the first of the Sime~Gen episodes.

The fate of that project is now in the hands of "crowd-sourcing" -- a concept that just tickles my heart no end!  I have always been an advocate of associated groups of individuals banding together to do original work, to change the world.

I'm still, after all these years, totally dedicated to CHANGE -- we have just soooo mucked up!  We have to FIX THIS, I keep ranting.  And that means we have to change our entire idea of what the problem is, so we can solve it.

When I was about 5 years old, no actually more like 3, -- which I remember because we moved coast to coast when I was about 4 1/2, and this particular memory is from before that move -- I parsed the problems in my little world (this was during WW II when they kept preempting or interrupting THE LONE RANGER on the radio to insert war news), and I decided that all the problems in the world were caused by adults having missed one, tiny but salient point about the structure of reality.

Yes, such was my thinking before the age of 5.  Consider at that age I thought the reason the wind blew was that the trees waved their leaves.  I hadn't yet figured out the world, even when my Dad explained wind blew because of pressure differences.  I KNEW it was tree leave that did it. 

My ideas about how weather happens have changed -- markedly! 

My ideas about THE LONE RANGER have not changed, -- much.

Here's the thought that has persisted, and which is behind all my novels.

Fiction consumption is a life-function of the same level and magnitude of the 5 life signs, organization, metabolism, growth, irritability, and reproduction.  Respiration, mobility, etc. are often cited as well.   I've seen definitions that include adaptation, but I could dispute that as if it were TRUE, we would never have species die-outs. 

So as a 3 or 4 year old, I added FICTION to that list, which I hadn't yet learned.  It never occurred to me that animals and trees didn't imagine.  Boy do humans learn a lot in the first 10 years of life!

But my main fiction sources, The Lone Ranger, Superman, persisted into the TV era, and onwards, and my ideas about the vital necessity of imagination developed through my exploration of science fiction - then adult Fantasy, and I launched a career into the teeth of the prevailing winds, adding Romance to Science Fiction but hiding that so deep inside the fictional worlds I built that editors couldn't see it.  My first sale was the Sime~Gen story Operation High Time to Fred Pohl -- read some of his novels and see how anti-Fred Pohl SFR really is, and I sold him a Sime~Gen story!  It is so deeply disguised, he didn't notice.

Today, I still firmly believe fiction -- specifically The Lone Ranger, Superman, -- and yes, Sime~Gen -- is more important than war, more vital to staying alive than winning a war, because fiction of this type reaches and nourishes the parts of your spirit that make you want to live and enjoy life.

Remember the gusto and zest with which Captain Kirk on Star Trek tackled impossible odds? 

Given an incompatible First Officer who refused to acknowledge the importance of emotions, particularly hunches and "gut feelings" -- Kirk enjoyed associating with Spock so much that Spock changed his mind.

Spock watched Kirk surmount impossible odds --

The formula for a novel of any genre has 2 main plots -- which bespeak the very essence of STORY.

a) A likeable hero overcomes apparently insurmountable odds toward a worthwhile goal.

b) Johnny gets his fanny caught in a beartrap and has his adventures getting it out.

Memorize those two, (they are true for ROMANCE too!) and evaluate every story you see or read to see which one it is.  Some really great literature has both.  Look at your life, and you'll see yourself doing both, often simultaneously.

Jim Butcher's Dresden Files novels, ...



...which I've reviewed on this blog many times, is mostly a beartrap plotted series -- but the wider envelope which keeps these novels a strong series and got it onto TV as a short-run SciFi channel (before the channel name change to SyFy), is crafted from A) the Likeable Hero with a Worthwhile Goal. 

You will find that same combination in C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner novels that I rave and rave about here ...



Study this structure, it's the key to why FICTION is a life-necessity like air, water, food, shelter. 

Heroic fiction -- Westerns, Romance, Science Fiction, Fantasy -- fiction with a real HERO whose mind and heart are revealed to you in a way that you can become that character -- is a necessity of LIFE, because it gives your spirit the strength to overcome obstacles, just as food gives your body the strength to overcome disease and heal and reproduce. 

In Occult practices, this principle is applied by "donning magical robes" or a "ring" or other symbolic garb, and becoming your best self, even if you are only pretending for the moment.  Do this pretense assiduously enough, persistently and repeatedly, and you do become what you pretend to be. 

That is part of the nature of humans: you become what you emulate.

There is another principle promulgated at the heart of Kaballah, that the entirety of existence is made from pure energy.  That's a principle of the occult studies, too, and was derided and scoffed almost to death by the early Scientists.  Now we have split the atom, and are examining quarks, bosons, and other phenomena that compose space and the stars.

We are made of pure energy, and that energy (says Kaballah) is God's Love breathed into the world and shaped by Words.  God recreates the entirety of creation millisecond by millisecond.

That's a principle -- our very existence depends on being recreated by Words in increments too small to perceive.

Science now scoffs at that -- and is desperately trying to explain all of human experience in terms of biochemistry and the electrochemistry of the brain. 

That is the science that science fiction is based on.

The recent dust-up over the SFWA Bulletin Cover and a blog by another person that erupted into a discussion of how the SF community is viciously rejecting women and SFR might be parsed into an example of how society is trying to reject the existence of the HAPPILY EVER AFTER "ending" - or "worthwhile goal" that we strive toward.

The Occult Studies -- particularly Tarot -- see the feminine principle as the masculine principle's aperture to "heaven."  See THE LOVERS card -- the male looks at the female on the material plane, and the female standing on the material plane looks upward at an angel.  The female connects the male "real world" to the ineffable.

Without that connection, goes the theory (which I didn't know at age 4), men behave in very brutal ways.

I suppose by now you've all forgotten the video images (that surfaced in June 2013) of a Syrian "opposition" fighter killing an Assad regime soldier and cutting out the man's heart and liver and eating them on camera.  That pretty much sums up in symbolism the "brutality" referred to in the theory.  The philosophy advocated by most of the factions trying to re-create the Middle East as a Caliphate are intransigently anti-woman. 

You might look at the way that society insists women be wholly covered in public and NOT LOOKED AT.  Thus, in public, no man sees a woman, and therefore is free of all contact with God (even though they publicly bow down to God repeatedly during the day, they do it without contact with the feminine principle.)  Sans femininity there is no way a male can connect with God.

That's what SOUL MATE is all about -- connecting our men to God on a soul level.

In Occult Studies, sex magic involves the public displays of feminine nudity, and even public sexual acts.  This practices releases a certain type of (very dangerous) power into the world, and especially  into the hands of the men involved in this practice.

Masculinity seeks power within the material world.  That is the nature of male-ness. 

Femininity seeks power within the spiritual world.  That is the nature of female-ness.

But "within every man is a woman; within every woman is a man" -- we are all composed of both.

The balance though is not (usually) equal within a human.

Occult studies maintain that Souls reincarnate sometimes as male sometimes as female.

Kaballah maintains that Souls reincarnate (if they do at all) always as the same gender because gender is a property of the Soul, not the body alone.

Sime~Gen uses the Occult theory - and in Sime~Gen Souls sometimes incarnate as male, sometimes as female, and sometimes as Sime and sometimes as Gen -- and even more confusing, Souls reincarnate as aliens.  That is humans can reincarnate as aliens of another species, and Souls that are now human may have been non-human prior to that.

This concept is reflected in Kaballah theory as the idea that some Souls occasionally incarnate as inanimate objects or insects or other animals, for the sake of completing some task.

The Kaballah based Chassidic school of thought maintains that Joy Breaks All Boundaries.

In other words, the "apparently insurmountable obstacles" between the Hero and the Worthwhile Goal are surmounted by tackling the problem with JOY.

Zest, verve, happiness, bright-eyed optimism, -- i.e. Captain Kirk asking Spock the odds -- is the spiritual fuel that causes success.

It works on beartraps too -- the beartrap is a "boundary."  The beartrap is the consequence of not having assessed the consequences of other people's actions (the trapper sets the trap and you step in it before the bear does).  Once it's snapped shut on you, you have been placed inside BOUNDARIES.

It is zest, joy, verve, happiness, that breaks out of the beartrap.  You must pry the jaws apart, taking whatever physical damage that costs you, but you will fail without HAPPINESS (or so the Kaballah based thought goes.)

We, as SFR writers, are looking to convince a gloomy public (that sees War as a solution rather than the problem) that there exists a HAPPILY EVER AFTER, an HEA.  It's real, and it's within your reach, except for the problem of the beartrap or the "apparently" insurmountable odds.

Where does a man get that zest, verve, joy, happiness that fuels a Captain Kirk approach to problems?

Note Captain Kirk is a "womanizer" -- i.e. is driven by sexual appetite.  And woman accept his advances readily.  That acceptance is one of his character traits, too.

There is a higher truth behind that formula.  Contact with the FEMALE PRINCIPLE fuels that sense of impervious JOY that romps happily over every obstacle.

In other words, that JOY that the Kaballah theory talks about comes from God via the female principle. 

The female principle is the nurturer, the astrological sign of Cancer, the 4th House of the Zodiac, and the other water signs, Scorpio, Pisces. 

So what do women get out of men? 

What is eating her?

Could it be war? 

Last week in:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/09/theme-dialogue-integration-part-1-whats.html

We touched on the idea that Mars represents a fistfight, maybe road rage or a bar fight, but Pluto represents a War - probably a World War.

Right now, Pluto is transiting opposite the USA natal chart's Sun (energy source, sense of individuality).

The Sun rules the natural 5th House (Hollywood, and children, siblings).  Pluto stirs the unresolved conflicts of childhood (the much used defense of "I was an abused child, so I commit crimes now.").

The Nation's childhood was in the birth of the Constitution -- and I maintain that the USA has two valid natal charts because we are two countries interwoven -- based on two distinct philosophies which have traditionally been represented by the Democrat and Republican parties (what we now call "Left" and "Right" which I see as misnomers.)

The Sun rules Leo, the sign of Sovereignty. 

Note how Astrology indicates that Entertainment (fiction), children (sex for reproduction, a life function), and siblings (bonding) are the selfsame identical energy.  Opposite the 5th house is FAME, the 11th House, Aquarius ruled by Uranus, freedom.  Think about the implications of the binding and intermingling of these concepts usually treated as separate and incompatible things.

You have the same kind of situation between the 1st House (Aries, ruled by Mars) and the 7th House (Libra, ruled by Venus).  (these are the "Natural" Houses; the personal Natal chart indicate the same forces, but place them in different signs depending on the time and place of birth)

1st House is your personal, individual Identity (your sense of self that develops at puberty with a sudden, inexplicable, need for privacy, especially privacy from parents, and today privacy from the Nanny State.)

7th House is the OTHER, family, spouse, foreigners, strangers, groups, and allies, partners, even enemies!  When there is a 7th House malfunction, you get xenophobia. 

With Pluto transiting the National natal 7th, we have publicly espoused inclusive group principles, the public refusal to "discriminate" and reject people from our groups on various grounds.  We rejected the principle that we should deny people loans on the basis of their financial condition.  When Pluto finished the 7th House transit and hit the 8th House cusp of the USA Natal chart (exactly to the day) we had the financial meltdown known as the Housing Crisis, where the mortgage and thus banking industry collapsed.

Now Pluto is transiting the National 8th Capricorn, (natural 8th is Scorpio ruled by Pluto; USA natal 8th is Capricorn ruled by Saturn).  The Nation has a stellium (complicated conjunction) in the Natal Second House which is ruled by Cancer. 

Which brings us back to the feminine principle (nurturing, home building, Cancer ruled by the Moon) vs. the masculine principle, imposing human will on material reality, (career building, success, Capricorn, ruled by Saturn.)

Whatever it is that is "eating her" nationally, is very likely to erupt full blown into national consciousness over the next couple years as Pluto transits opposite the national Sun.

The National Sun is in Cancer (in both national natal charts), Mother, Home and Apple Pie. 

This eruption of complaints about how women are treated in Science Fiction communities is all connected to the national conversation about "the place of women" in the world, and in life.

There are those arguing that women should be kept inside the home and never seen in public. 

There are those arguing that women are absolutely no different from men.

What's eating her is that society is using force and coercion to KEEP HER WITHIN BOUNDARIES.

What's eating him is that society is "including" her in public life, eroding the boundaries men have created.

The solution - magically and kaballistically speaking - is JOY. 

The Kaballah maintains that there is an intrinsic difference between masculine and feminine functions in the matrix of reality.  A very deep, abstract study of this philosophy reveals that the difference that Kaballah fingers as the distinction between men and women is very,  VERY different from the difference that society (historical and modern) has tried to impose.

In other words, we have parsed the problem incorrectly, which is why we can't solve it.

It's very possible we don't understand Kaballah at all, really -- as it has traditionally been interpreted by men only.  Today many female scholars are tackling the climb up the Tree of Life into the rarified reaches of Kaballah.  So things might change drastically in the very near future.

What seems clear to me, and has always seemed clear since I can remember even thinking a thought, is that FICTION is the tool for solving this problem.

Fiction does two things:

a) it BREAKS BOUNDARIES constraining the imagination, allowing you to concieve and try out various descriptions of the problem and of the solution.

b) it INJECTS JOY into your life as you experience triumph together with your avatar in the story, and that lets you break the very real boundaries that constrain you in your everyday life

Which brings us back to Sime~Gen, and the space war that Loreful wants to present to the world.

Sime~Gen solves the problem of the way humanity has artificially imposed "boundaries" on each gender and thus created The War Between The Sexes -- which I maintained is a scam here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/theme-conflict-integration-part-1.html

Sime~Gen postulates that humanity mutates into Sime and Gen.  There are male Simes and female Simes and male Gens and female Gens.  Simes Kill Gens to live, to survive. 

Thus the difference between Sime and Gen preempts, overshadows and wipes out the significance of the differences between male and female.  But it replaces it with an even bigger difference, a lethal difference.  Men and Women still find their Soul Mates, reproduce, and live Happily Ever After, and in fact it's those men and women who eventually solve the problem of half of humanity needing to Kill the other half.

Then with that problem solved, they dissolve the Territory Boundaries they created between Sime and Gen so each could survive, and they create an interstellar space drive that requires cooperation between Sime and Gen to work.

They venture into the galaxy, and run smack into an existing interstellar civilization. 

The result is War.  (that was planned into the Sime~Gen series premise, and the stories I want to write lie on the other side of that war, so I was happy to license Loreful to create me a space war, and so was Jean Lorrah, my co-author on Sime~Gen.)

Even at the age of 4, I knew that war was WRONG because it interfered with fiction imbibing.  And I still stand by that assessment.

Fiction imbibing is a necessity of life -- war is all about death. 

Remember Conflict is the Essence of Story.

Life vs. Death makes a good conflict to generate a fabulous plot. 

I actually adore World War II movies -- the Hollywood version of war, not the real thing.  Real thing is to be avoided - which is the message of all good fiction.  NO WAR!!! 

War is the result of the failure of diplomacy, which is a form of warfare. 

War conflicts with the necessities of Life, and Sime~Gen is all about LIFE - about living, not dying, about the glories and joys of life (but, yes, there are some barriers to overcome to get there).

So the Simes and Gens who have hammered their way to Unity will now hit another barrier, one that will try very hard (Pluto hard) to shatter that Unity. 

This game is going to be FUN - and it will spread much JOY into this world that is so sorely in need of JOY. 

What's eating both him and her is BARRIERS -- walls around us that keep us from communicating.

Play this game, take home some joy, target your communications with others, see if that breaks or surmounts any of the barriers in your life -- especially the barrier to getting your own fiction published!

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Jacqueline Lichtenberg will be Rowena's guest on Crazy Tuesday internet radio

     The Sime~Gen novels by Jacqueline Lichtenberg and Jean Lorrah are being turned into a video role-playing game, taking the series off Earth and into space. In this episode of EPIC award winner (Friend of E-Publishing) Rowena Cherry's radio show, Rowena  interviews Jacqueline about this fascinating process, as well as worldbuilding science fiction. Tune in for more about Sime~Gen and the new story-driven game, Ambrov X.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/pwrnetwork/2013/09/10/crazy-tuesday

Rating Fallacies

After watching the French movie AMOUR, I gave it a rating of 4 on Netflix. It’s a quiet yet stunning drama about the way a retired couple’s life disintegrates after a stroke disables the wife. It held me completely riveted, but I would never watch it again. The emotionally crushing effect is augmented by the claustrophobic dimness of the set in many scenes and the complete absence of background music. If you fall into the age range of the characters or have close relatives in that phase of life, you’ll probably find this movie as powerful as I did; just be prepared to be depressed.

Anyway, Netflix will probably respond to the 4 rating (unusually high for me; I give most movies a 3) by recommending a batch of other depressing foreign films for my viewing pleasure. In general, I have little interest in depressing foreign films or, in fact, any hyper-realistic drama or fiction. The high rating results from the selection process that leads me to rent very few such movies. I wouldn’t watch one unless I had good reason to believe (from reviews or word of mouth) that it was outstanding. So of course the ratings will be skewed high.

In my favorite genres, however—fantasy, horror, and light science fiction—I rent lots of movies. I judge them more stringently, partly because I know those genres better and partly because of course a larger sample group will include fewer brilliant standouts. Therefore, my ratings aren’t a reliable guide to my tastes, because on the whole I’ve given fewer high scores to movies in my favorite categories than to those in my least favorite, paradoxical as that track record might sound.

Now, I won’t say Netflix’s algorithms are totally off base. Its recommendations in fantasy, SF, and animation make sense. However, the rows labeled “Dark romantic British dramas based on books” and “Emotional period pieces based on classic literature” range all over the place in their relevance to my tastes. Not to mention the miscellaneous grouping classified as “Critically acclaimed movies”—a category that includes both AMOUR and THE CABIN IN THE WOODS boggles the mind.

Amazon recommendations sometimes show similar weirdness. They know what books I’ve liked in the past, but they have no way of knowing WHY I bought a particular book. For example, I'm a devoted fan of S. M. Stirling's Emberverse series (DIES THE FIRE and its sequels.) Some equally fervent fans of that universe love the military strategy and battle scenes, which I skim over to get back to what I consider the essence of the story, while others dislike the neo-pagan culture of one of the story's societies and the overall rebirth of magic, which are my favorite aspects of Stirling's post-apocalyptic world. Supposedly readers will eventually be able to fine-tune their responses in such a way that the online store’s computer mind will target their likes and dislikes with unerring accuracy.

On the other hand, sometimes those recommendations do lead me to a book or movie I enjoy and might never have noticed otherwise.

In case you’d like to find out more about the film AMOUR, Suzy McKee Charnas has written an in-depth review of it. (Spoilers included. Reading this review is what inspired me to watch the movie, since I don’t mind being “spoiled.”)

Suzy Says

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Dialogue Integration - Part 1 - What's Eating Him? by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Dialogue Integration - Part 1 - What's Eating Him? by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

---------But first a long commercial -----------



That is part of the LOREFUL Development Team
Today is the kickoff of the KICKSTARTER for the Sime~Gen science fiction RPG to be published by Loreful which will bring the humanity you've met in the Sime~Gen novels into first contact with aliens-from-outer-space. 

Here is an article about Aharon Cagle, the fellow whose brand new company, Loreful, has licensed Sime~Gen for a Galactic Adventure.  He's the one holding the green light-saber in the photo above. 

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/morning_call/2013/08/cincinnati-startup-founder-left.html


People have given me blank looks when I say KICKSTARTER, so let me explain how this works.


In our old world, people who wanted to start a business had to find venture capital from rich people, so all the rich got richer and the poor got poorer, and only rich people got any choices.

Today, us not-so-rich and even somewhat poor folks have a chance to gamble on brand new businesses. 

OK, you don't get "dividends" if the business succeeds, but you get something (depending on how much you contribute, the list is on the side of the page). 

What you do get that we've never gotten before is a SAY-SO about what products reach the market.

If you want SFR, you don't have to beg "editors" or "publishers" in Manhattan and be mad if they won't publish SFR.  There's a new process that puts all the power in your hands. 

This new process is CROWD-SOURCING and there are a lot of websites that do it, with various rules.

KICKSTARTER was one of the first, and its deal is you don't pay anything unless and until the project makes its stated goal.  They collect money by billing your AMAZON account, or your PAYPAL account, (you choose) but the bill only goes through if the stated goal is met.  Then the company is obligated to keep you informed (by email) and to deliver the perq they promised. 

So AMBROV X the Sime~Gen RPG is doing a Kickstarter. 

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aharon/ambrov-x-a-sime-gen-roleplaying-game

A kickstarter project only lasts a few weeks, so either chip in now, or the window of opportunity to choose will be gone.

I know where the people behind this game are "coming from" -- they want to see a balanced weave of story and plot, and they want very much to have some characters and some threads through the Game that are essentially Science Fiction Romance. 

You can play a character of either gender and partner with either gender.  Given enough funding, they can make every combination of choice available.  It's a "vision" they have now -- you can make it real not just for yourself, but for the world by contributing a bit of money right now. 

This is the game that might change the perception of SFR where it matters most, and lead to more change. 

After all, Sime~Gen is credited with having opened a crack in the Science Fiction genre-wall to let in huge amounts of "Relationship."  There have already been some successful Games with broad streaks of Romance.  This Dev Team for Loreful has some unique ideas for broadening those streaks.


--------------------END COMMERCIAL-----------

OK, so last week we thought a lot about Dialogue:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/dialogue-part-6-how-to-write-bullshit.html

Links to previous posts on Dialogue are at the top of that Part 6 post.

The gist of the matter is that we have looked at how to write LIAR dialogue,
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/11/dialogue-part-5-how-to-write-liar.html

and last week, we examined the difference between liar dialogue and bullshit dialogue with a side-trip into hate speech, relevant to the SFWA controversy, and to internet posts and comments.

All that theory stuff is just fine, but to get a conversation going between two (or more!) characters, they have to have something to talk about and something to say about it.

Those are really two different SKILLS -- giving your character something to talk about AND something to say about it.

"to talk about" is the topic of the story, the THEME

"to say about it" is the character's own personal, sometimes emotional, opinion about that theme.

In addition, there's a third skill in dialogue called "off the nose" in screenwriting.

It means you don't mean what you say, but your meaning is obvious to the other character, and to the audience.

The best example of "off the nose" is sarcasm.  You say a thing is WONDERFUL, meaning clearly it's horrible and you are not surprised, but still shocked.  Or you can say many other things with tone of voice using that single word, WONDERFUL.  Alternatively, you can actually mean wonderful when you say wonderful -- but will the character hearing that understand it?

Writing great dialogue is about communicating the character's opinion on the topic of the theme to the audience, without saying that opinion in "so many words." 

"Off The Nose" dialogue requires applying a "show don't tell" technique to your choice of words your character will use. 

Before you can choose those words, (then trim them down for brevity, punch, impact, pacing, characterization, etc.) your character has to have:

a) something to say
b) a reason for saying it
c) a character to say it to
d) a good reason to believe the other character will understand what's being said

Take those 4 together, and it amounts to SOMETHING HAS TO BE EATING HIM/HER.

That something is probably related to the CONFLICT that's driving the plot, but in the deep psychological way in which we redirect or misdirect our emotional energy at some proximate petty annoyance rather than at the real problem.

For example, take a man whose marriage is falling apart, and maybe he just got fired from his job, or his business is going bankrupt.  Yeah, business going bankrupt is a good one.

These two kinds of "my life is falling apart" generally come when Saturn (which has a 29 year cycle and builds what you normally think of as your life) hits a sensitive point in the horoscope testing how strong the structure you have built actually is, and/or Pluto slams into a different sensitive point at the same time -- powering the Build/Restrict action of Saturn with the dramatic magnification of Pluto. 

This is an example of how to apply my ASTROLOGY JUST FOR WRITERS posts to creating integrated-techniques such as we are talking about now in these advanced posts.

Astrology just for writers posts are collected here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

Once you've determined what sort of position in life your main characters are in, then you can figure at what age the kind of events you plan to hurl at them would happen.

For example, the fellow who stepped forward as a whistle-blower on the NSA scandal is 29, and his decision to do this is entirely typical of 29-year-olds.  That's a sink-or-swim year for everyone because it is your first Saturn Return (where Saturn gets back to where it was when you were born).  It is the point at which the strictures of Saturn become the freedom to choose what to do next. 

29 is the age of divorce and re-marriage, or perhaps of taking the insane risk of having your first child.  It is the year of car accidents, of getting injured in war and having your whole future reset into a different direction because of it.  It is finishing a Medical School internship etc -- it is either the fruits of past labors or the freedom after failing.

Each of the planets produces such a cycle, so that very specific types of dramatic challenges are tied to very specific ages.  You don't need astrology to figure this out.  Just read a pile of biographies. 

So what there is about a specific situation that is eating your character from the inside out and causing his OUTBURSTS of dialogue, will characterize that character because what bothers people about things is very much age-specific.  Where the irritation will find a target in the environment is also age-specific.  Choosing what is bugging your character, and what he targets with his annoyance, will SHOW DON'T TELL his characterization.

Back to the fellow whose marriage is falling apart (7th House) and business is going bankrupt (10th House).  So OK, he has a dust-up fight with his wife over breakfast, directs "hate speech" at her, she retaliates with lies (technical terms there!  Read those books discussed in Dialogue posts), he storms out and just makes it to the Bank to see if he got the loan he needs, and bull shits the bank into giving him the loan.

He gets to his business location and finds OSHA agents padlocking the doors, his employees standing around the parking lot.  (OSHA administers the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act. )

His FAILURE AT EVERYTHING boils over and he decks the hapless clerk who's padlocking the door and plastering big orange signs on it.

Next scene, he's sitting in jail and a public defender arrives.  "Where's my lawyer?"  "Said you owe him too much money and he's not working for you anymore." 

Now what does this guy SAY? 

Do you think he'll say something precisely (on the nose) relevant to the current situation?

Or will he explode, spewing out emotion pent up from all the PRIOR MISTAKES that have led to this?

Is he so mad at his wife he decks the public defender and ends up in psych hold? 

Does he see his fate as the consequence of his actions?

Does he see his fate as the consequence of what other people (who hate him?) do? 

Or is the Public Defender the Soul Mate he's really been looking for?  Is SHE in such need of having her career saved by his case that he HELPS HER, thus cementing a new course for his life?

If the Public Defender (you are watching SUITS aren't you?)






is his soul mate, why does she turn up at this moment?  Have they met before?  Does either have a drinking problem?  What does each one believe about the direction their world is going in, what effect their actions have on that direction, and the ultimate destiny of the world as a whole? 

Does either one know anything about HISTORY? 

Say, for example, this small business owner whose life is in the tank (rather literally), is a descendant of someone hugely famous, and thus is "being eaten" inside by a need to live up to his heritage and become famous, too, he might respond in a very specific way to the "LEGALLY BLONDE" type Public Defender.



If he knew her before, say in college?, and knew she is from a hugely famous family, he might respond a different way to her replacing the attorney he can't pay (only he can because he's got that bank loan in his pocket -- or does he? Is he thinking the loan will be retracted because of OHSA?)

What if the gorgeous lawyer woman waltzes into his cell with all kinds of supercilious body language, maybe a reminder of his wife that morning, and he roars to his feet and DECKS HER!? 

Punching someone out is actually "dialogue" though not spoken words.  So is sex.  Actions can constitute silent conversation - an exchange of meaning the audience can follow even though there are no words, has the content of "dialogue."  The same kind of thinking goes behind choosing those action-interchanges.

So let's say the two of them met in college, say in a History course, they desperately had to pass, so they helped each other (maybe they helped each other cheat?)


Let's say this is the content of the course they had in college, and what I quote Ed Wilson as explaining below is some of the historical knowledge and attitude they have in common with each other -- that this hapless failure of a man does not have in common with his wife?

Ancient Pre-History

On Allan Cole's World on Facebook, Frank Gessel gave us this provocative link:

http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/historians/g/013108Procopius.htm

--------quote about Procopius ------
Definition: Procopius was a Byzantine official and historian best known for his unofficial, gossipy, secret history of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian and his wife Theodora.

Born in Palestine, in Caesarea, Procopius lived from c. A.D. 500 probably to some time after 562. He served as legal advisor and secretary to Justinian's military talent Belisarius whom he accompanied on campaigns. In 527 they were in Mesopotamia; in 533, in Africa; and in 536, in Italy. He lived in Constantinople from 542, perhaps becoming prefect twenty years later, in 562, if he was still alive then.
-----------end quote------------


-------------quote Ed Wilson on Allan Cole's World on Facebook -----

Edward Wilson Jeff: Yes “Re-Conquer” is a good word here, after all that part of the world had conquered the part that was re-conquering it some time ago. Sort of like what happened in 1940 – 45 when America “re-took” the UK.

Read the excellent "Belisarius Series" by David Drake and Eric Flint for the action leading up to 535.

I have set the beginning of my story “Ride Byfrost Bridge” in the early part (Georgian calendar that wouldn’t be around for another 1000 years yet but…) of 535 because on 535 Feb. 8 the Sundia Straight volcano blew, and gave us the straight – and a major major injection of dust into the stratosphere. It was followed in 540 by a major at Ilopango in what is now El Salvador.

What this / these eruptions did was open the Sahara desert to the crossing by flees, and that brought the black death to Alexandria (still the heart of the grain trade) and thence to Constantinople (Justinian caught it), and thence via the pear trade to Glastonbury (where it decimated the Latin descendents population (Author’s people) resulting in the fall of Author two years later to the Anglo-Saxons (who later adopted Author as their ancestor).

It returned Scotland to the horror’s of 1635 – 1595 BC, and did much other major damage in history (breaking the great dam in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for the second time – and I know men with their names in the third dam).

It may have been that there were two VEI 8’s in close succession, and that ended Justinian’s plans. I await the results from the newly re-discovered Irish chronology to tell us which of these two good candidate years for a VEI 7 or 8 is authoritative, but it is a mess.

I'm cramming on the SV presentation for Westercon so goodbye for now

----------------------end quote of Ed Wilson-------------------

Yeah, FLEAS redistributed by Super-volcanoes.  We're talking serious worldbuilding here. 

If these two share this perspective/understanding of how their world got to be as it is today, a very unusual view of the world and its dynamics, it could be the wedge of intimacy between them.

It's a kind of Geek-bonding.  They speak the same language.

Now the writer's challenge becomes SHOW DON'T TELL the nature of that bond, of that perspective on how our fragile civilization has us embedded within it, facing these huge cosmic forces. 

From that, one can evolve an entire philosophy of life.  How does that view of how BIG the forces facing us are translate into decking an OSHA agent?

Is the government seen as a wildcatting super-volcano destroying civilization on Earth? 

If they BOTH see OSHA as an unstoppable force, and themselves as fleas, do they know this bit of History that Ed Wilson put together and the exchange goes something like:

"Fleas brought the Black Death and changed the politics of Europe.  Surely a Lawyer and a Businessman can deflect the wrath of a mere government department?"

I discussed this non-fiction book about a historic LOVE STORY (complete with Romeo and Juliet tragedy) here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/theme-character-integration-part-4.html

Queen of the Air:



The book Queen of the Air is about a woman circus performer who eventually marries (among many marriages for each) the man who perfected the Triple and first accomplished the 3 1/2 on the flying trapeze, Codona.  The book also features some of the personal biographies and interactions with the Flying Wallendas (who really were not flying trapeze artists, but high wire specialists). 

Did I mention the several times I've talked about this biography of the circus that the author started as a journalist, as did Allan Cole?  And Marion Zimmer Bradley also put in her stint in journalism and magazine editing.  As you are considering your career path, remember the biographical points of writers - journalism and travel are big commonalities among the best.

The Wallendas are still producing kids with the trick genes that give them superb balance, and here is an item about a recent stunt, with obvious publicity ramifications.

Nik Wallenda in Sarasota Florida
http://news.yahoo.com/florida-nik-wallenda-readies-grand-canyon-high-wire-201220347.html

That is a snatch of REAL LIFE history which illustrates my point about Saturn and Pluto.

Noel Tyl, the famous Astrologer, pinpointed a set of Natal Chart conditions which are the signature of people FAMOUS like these circus people whose lives and bigger-than-life LOVES are revealed in that book.

One of the components of that sort of FAME is a natal aspect of Pluto to one of the inner planets.  With that natal aspect, the ordinary person's Saturn cycle turns into HUGE ups and HUGE downs, and batterings and beatings by the Fates.

Note particularly at the end of Queen of the Air, how the divorce proceeding particulars are determined by Codona's previous (and now gone) fame.  If he takes the Queen of the Air to divorce court, the press will eat it up, in his moment of utter failure.

Now suppose our Businessman with the disaffected wife and the business closed by OSHA (probably because his wife did something that had prevented him from getting the loan to fix whatever violation he was closed down for) -- has been beset by the Media because his family is FAMOUS (maybe for some very progressive stances on stuff like workplace safety?), and his jailing is already being noticed.

Suppose he has a philosophical angst problem eating him.  Maybe this particular problem is a "ript from the headlines" type thing -- something which would be MAGNIFIED by a Pluto transit.

Pluto is called the Upper Octave of Mars -- Mars the god of war, Mars is the planet that is associated with that fit-of-temper response such as decking the OSHA agent represents.

Pluto is Mars Writ Large -- Mars is a fistfight, Pluto is a World War.  Mars is a volcano.  Pluto is a Super-volcano. 

Pluto transits bring up "whats eating you" from the subconscious in a major event, an eruption of raw energy.

Pluto transits time the trigger for emotionally striking out as an adult at the torments of childhood.

In Queen of the Air, we see how both these people had difficult, near-starvation, child-labor, abused childhoods.  And we see how, in that final divorce proceeding, that moment crystalized everything that had happened in childhood into a violent confrontation, writ large.

How does a writer use a piece of non-fiction like this?

Marion Zimmer Bradley used this same research, but not this book, by re-inventing the Circus and the Circus world of that time, and the history of the Triple Sommersault in The Catch Trap.  She used the Catholic background of many of the European circus families -- the non-fiction book doesn't really emphasize that Religion element, but Marion fearlessly told it like it was.  Catholicism dominated that world in a very orthodox way.

That RELIGION element added serious fire to her circus story of two gay guys.

Today, the public discourse on religion is shifting and changing, so looking over the Headlines for an item of religion to add fire to the Businessman, OSHA and the Lawyer story, I found a really explosive little item that could fuel this example Romance.

Suppose our Businessman scion of a famous (say) Catholic family had recently converted to Islam?

Suppose what's eating him is a philosophical conviction that this world is evil beyond all words, and he's either planning to do something about it, or toying with the idea of planning to do something about it.  The evidence of his leanings, and thinking (maybe cell phone call destination data, computer searches) is inside the business location now under OSHA lock? 

A great deal of the reason why he decked the OSHA agent would then have had to do with his RELIGIOUS SCHISM with his family -- with their HATE SPEECH against his new religion, and maybe against him because of his embracing a religion he sees as the one and only religion of peace. 

And into his cell walks this blonde lawyer shrink-wrapped in a tight white dress with a V neckline down to here.  He knows her from his college days (one would expect he'd slept with her at least once) when she rescued him from failing a History course by teaching him about Fleas and Super-volcanoes.  In that history lesson (if you check what Ed said above) you will see a great deal of information about the rise and fall of Islam in the Middle East. 

As a writer, you can pluck out the bits that would illustrate your theme, maybe rewrite or dramatize other bits of that history of Black Plague, fleas, the Sahara, etc.  This Businessman would have developed ( using selective amnesia) a whole take on the world based on the Black Plague, peace and justice.  His dialogue would then be based on that "take on the world" -- and if you keep it "off the nose" the audience will figure out his take on the world from what he says so you never, ever, have to tell your audience what he's thinking.

For a twist -- maybe the lawyer who won't work for him because he doesn't pay on time is his wife (soon to be ex)?  Or maybe the lawyer who walks into his cell is his wife of the moment?

The point is that his new Lawyer is the perfect symbol of everything he's come to revile about this current world, while at the same time (conflict is the essence of story) she arouses all that very primal, college age, sexuality. 

Perhaps his violent but throttled reaction to his wife's hate-speech that morning comes out at his new Lawyer and he decks her?  Or does it verbally?

Maybe her career is at a point where, if this client refuses her services, she'll be fired from the Public Defender's office, and given her previous record, might never be hired anywhere again (anywhere legal, that is).

See what you can do with conflict?

OK, so what can we extract from Businessman's tussle with Islam that could fuel this story in the same way that Catholicism fueled Marion Zimmer Bradley's circus novel?

Catholicism rejects gay guys, and MZB wrote about two gay Catholic guys in a Fame-driven profession (circus stars).

What does Islam reject as firmly as Catholicism rejects gays?

Here are two historical perspective summaries of the schism within Islam that has manifested in the sporadic violent attacks on symbols of Western culture -- we're looking for a symbol of Western Culture that is the core of this businessman's heart (as gayness was at the core of MZB's characters hearts) that is rejected by Islam.

-------------article 1------------
This one is from the New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/23/magazine/the-philosopher-of-islamic-terror.html

quote from the essay:  To anyone who has looked closely enough, Al Qaeda and its sister organizations plainly enjoy yet another strength, arguably the greatest strength of all, something truly imposing -- though in the Western press this final strength has received very little attention. Bin Laden is a Saudi plutocrat with Yemeni ancestors, and most of the suicide warriors of Sept. 11 were likewise Saudis, and the provenance of those people has focused everyone's attention on the Arabian peninsula. But Al Qaeda has broader roots. The organization was created in the late 1980's by an affiliation of three armed factions -- bin Laden's circle of ''Afghan'' Arabs, together with two factions from Egypt, the Islamic Group and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the latter led by Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's top theoretician. The Egyptian factions emerged from an older current, a school of thought from within Egypt's fundamentalist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, in the 1950's and 60's. And at the heart of that single school of thought stood, until his execution in 1966, a philosopher named Sayyid Qutb -- the intellectual hero of every one of the groups that eventually went into Al Qaeda, their Karl Marx (to put it that way), their guide.
Qutb (pronounced KUH-tahb) wrote a book called ''Milestones,'' and that book was cited at his trial, which gave it immense publicity, especially after its author was hanged. ''Milestones'' became a classic manifesto of the terrorist wing of Islamic fundamentalism.
....
But Sayyid Qutb stayed put and paid dearly for his stubbornness. Nasser jailed him in 1954, briefly released him, jailed him again for 10 years, released him for a few months and finally hanged him in 1966. Conditions during the first years of prison were especially bad. Qutb was tortured. Even in better times, according to his followers, he was locked in a ward with 40 people, most of them criminals, with a tape recorder broadcasting the speeches of Nasser 20 hours a day. Still, by smuggling papers in and out of jail, he managed to continue with his writings, no longer in the ''Western tinged'' vein of his early, literary days but now as a full-fledged Islamist revolutionary. And somehow, he produced his ''In the Shade of the Qur'an,'' this gigantic study, which must surely count as one of the most remarkable works of prison literature ever produced.
....
The NYTimes essay is from a book by the author of the essay.
Paul Berman has written for the magazine about Vaclav Havel, Vicente Fox and other subjects. He is the author of the coming ''Terror and Liberalism'' (W.W. Norton), from which this essay is adapted.




-----------end article 1----------



---------article 2-------------
From The Jerusalem Post:

The Region: Islamism: Back to the sources

It’s easy to see why Qaradawi is the leading Sunni Islamist thinker in the world today.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/The-Region-Islamism-Back-to-the-sources-316748

excerpted quote:
To read Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s 1984 book Islamic Education and Hasan al-Bana is to get an Islamic education. Nobody should be allowed to talk about Islam or political Islamism without having read this or similar texts. Just as with Marx’s “Communist Manifesto,” the Islamists, too, disdain to conceal their aims. Yet those who don’t read their actual texts, speeches and debates but only their public relations misinformation know nothing.

It’s easy to see why Qaradawi is the leading Sunni Islamist thinker in the world today, the spiritual guide behind Egypt’s Islamist revolution. He knows how to express his ideas clearly and persuasively.

Here is his depiction of the Muslim world before the rise of revolutionary Islamism to power and prominence: “The condition of the Muslim nation was like a wasteland in the middle of the [mid-19th century]....

Blind imitation of self-made Western laws and appreciation of foreign values had set over the lives of Muslims... whose names were no doubt Islamic but [whose] brains were West-bred.”

Notice his different angle on what for the Western author would be a tale of Western imperialism and the technological and organizational backwardness of Muslim peoples. Qaradawi does not put the emphasis on Western strength or even injustice but on Muslim weakness.

----------end article 2-----------

---------article 3--------------
From CNN

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/10/world/meast/zawahiri-peace-plan/index.html

excerpt:
The brother of al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri is proposing to mediate a peace deal between the West and Islamists.

In an exclusive interview with CNN, Mohamed al Zawahiri unveiled his proposal for the first time, saying he is in a unique position to help end the violence and that both sides need to make concessions.

As the al Qaeda leader's brother, he says they are ideologically inseparable, and that if anyone can talk his brother out of violence it's him.

He is like so many former prisoners I've met -- calm, collected, focused and utterly convinced by long held views examined, tested and re-forged in incarceration.

----------end article 3------------

So, suppose our Businessman is on a path of conversion to Islam attracted by it's core dedication to peace.  He's got to choose somehow between Shia and Sunni, and/or between Al Qaeda, Hezbolah, and Hamas, The Muslim Brotherhood, the Bathist, the Saudi wahhabism and on and on.

He comes from a Catholic background.  His notion of Christian is that there is only ONE - Catholicism is still pretty monolithic.  Protestants and Jews are used to thinking in terms of shades of gray, this ism and that ist.  Catholics might consider the Greek Orthodox in the same breath with the Pope, but not very often.

So he's looking for that certainty and clarity in Islam and not finding it.

He's probably thinking that the only way to settle this world to be friendly to business is to adopt Sharia Law, to forcibly eliminate Usury, and make the punishments so severe nobody would ever consider violating the law.

What is his secret?  What is he "in the closet" about?  What is his secret from himself?  What is he trying to pretend to be that there is no way he can be?

These great, sweeping movements that change world society - like the fleas haplessly migrating on people and animals replete with diseases - mash people like our Businessman and his lovely new Lawyer to a smear on History's Highway, or they create Great Men of History out of someone with a strategically placed Natal Pluto and a current Saturn transit.

Note that the authors of these Muslim philosophical texts wrote while in jail, as did Hitler and The Rebbe.  Lots of men hailed as "Great" because of their philosophical message's resonance with a population wrote the key work of their philosophy while in isolation, or brooded years in the solitude of a cave, wandering in the wilderness.

ISOLATION seems to have something to do with releasing these messages into the world.  Remember the fleas were released when a barrier was removed by a volcano erupting.  The release of something of great significance is often explosive in nature.

Perhaps our Businessman has grasped this pattern and has been praying to become one of those Historic Figures who releases a new philosophy into the world?

Perhaps, shocked and surprised by finding himself in jail, utterly infuriated that his long-time lawyer has deserted him, totally dismayed by who his new lawyer turns out to be (an old flame?), he suddenly realizes he is in jail.  Just as he prayed to be.

Wanting to be famous like his family always expected him to be, he suddenly sees the Divine Finger writing on his jail wall.  He belongs here because it's going to make him famous once he writes his manifesto about Islam taking over the world.  (besides, it'll sell like hotcakes, and he'll make a pile of dough, right? Business is business.)

So he wants to stay in jail.

OK, so what is his line of dialogue to his new Lawyer.

"What the hell are you doing here?  I don't want a lawyer!"

"Get the hell out of my jail cell?"

"What do you think you're doing?  I meant to cream that bastard."

"You're fired!"

"Get me an iPad!  I've got work to do."

None of those will work.  The right line of dialogue for him at that moment will reveal whatever it is that he's hiding from his new co-religionists.   It has to bespeak exactly what is eating him.

Islam has nothing against fame and glory.  Of course, they have this hierarchy with sheiks (a version of a King with power of life and death over their subjects, ruling by divine right).  Since he doesn't have the credentials to interpret the Koran, maybe (I know virtually nothing about Islam) it's somehow wrong of him to think of himself that way.  Or perhaps it's wrong of him to want to make money off what ought to be holy work?

What if he has had a sex change operation?  Would Islam still consider him female?

Or what if he is female (and his new lawyer male?), and wants to oust the all-male Islamic clergy?

Maybe the business he runs is a strip club with illegal gambling in the back room?

What is the most egregious symbol of Western life that Islamists hate?  That's the business he runs?

What could he instruct his lawyer to do that would guarantee OSHA would see to it he spent years in jail?

Maybe he's been using the strip club/gambling operation to launder money for Islamist causes, and that is what he confesses to his Lawyer and instructs her to point the investigation of his business to the evidence of what he's been doing.

That would draw out the entire proceeding and get him jailed for years, and make him a newspaper headline.  He'd have plenty of time to write the manifesto he intends to make him famous (and rich) like the rest of his family, but in such a shameful pursuit it would serve his family right for pressuring him?

Deciding to confess to money laundering would be the sort of thing done at age 29, a grand gesture and a way of striking back at those seen as causing his failure.

So the line of dialogue we're looking for is, as the shock on his face at seeing his old flame walk in, "Have I got a case for you!"

And that would be the final line of the book.  But the audience would understand all the nuances by then.

The book would be structured in two main story-lines - working toward converging in this final moment: Businessman/Religious convert and Woman Lawyer.

As you work out the details of Businessman's story, Woman Lawyer's story is generated as the obverse of his story, but at that final line of dialogue, we see her ambition fulfilled.

THEME: Fame vs. Notoriety, or maybe just World Prominence

The story is all about that inner conflict Businessman has with his famous family, and his feeling of failure and inadequacy because of it.

Note how the Jerusalem Post article (2 above) says:

Notice his different angle on what for the Western author would be a tale of Western imperialism and the technological and organizational backwardness of Muslim peoples. Qaradawi does not put the emphasis on Western strength or even injustice but on Muslim weakness.

So this story would be about how that "failure is caused by our shameful weakness" (meaning weakness in applying the tenets of Islam to daily life?) is so very attractive to this Businessman being eaten alive by his inner sense of failure.

Qaradawi's prescription for curing that sense of weakness would have a certain appeal.

But our Businessman is smart as well as hot-tempered.  He's convinced he can do better than Qawadari and Sayyid Qutb put together.  Once he's gotten himself into jail, he realizes the stuff he's been thinking and maybe even writing or blogging about can change the world.

Nothing in his life makes sense to him until New Lawyer walks into his jail cell.  Then all the pieces come together.  He gives her the story of a lifetime, and he becomes rich and famous and changes the world - makes his mark on history more indelible than the mark made by those migrating fleas.

What he sees and why will be the substance of the Lawyer's half of this story.  She has the ambition, and she has the connections.  She can get him into jail and out of it again, and she will because it fulfills her greatest ambition (a REALLY big case, one that makes Legal History, maybe international Legal History). 

So the THEME comes together in one line of DIALOGUE, a final line of the novel or film, "Have I got a case for you!" 

Find yourself a group of topics such as mentioned throughout this article, and compile them into a story.  Then do it again, and again, until you can't look at a random blog post comment and NOT see a whole novel pop up before your eyes. 

Writers look at the world from a different perspective than audiences do.  That's how you can tell if you are a writer -- or not.

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

The Power of Perseverance

Yesterday, I read an RWR interview with bestselling author Cindy Dees, the penultimate chapter of "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladstone, and something else that skips my mind. Each author had something evergreen to say about the power of perseverance.

Sometimes, the most ancient lessons are the most timeless, particularly proverbs and sayings about the power of hard work, of the determination to keep trying, and of the self-discipline involved in getting up every day ("every day" is important) earlier than ones fellows, struggling longer to solve a  seemingly impossible problem than ones rivals, putting in the extra effort to complete a task and also to do optional extra tasks, to not procrastinate, and to make good use of discretionary time.

For authors and writers, this may mean that every day is a "NaNoWriMo" day, and by hook or by crook they write 5,000 words, or whatever their goal might be.  National Novel Writing Month is November, btw.

For rice farmers (per Outliers), this might mean a 360-day, dawn-to-dusk year, with three consecutive crops.

For students, it might mean getting up an hour or two earlier than everyone else to log in extra time in libraries or on computers --or whatever the newest technologies may be-- and doing more with their vacations than chilling.

For older insights, check out Walpole's Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto, and also The Castle of Perseverance (and when I studied these works, "perseverance" was pronounced "per-SEV-er-ance" rather than "per-se-VERE-ance".)

Here is a collection of thought-provoking and inspiring quotes on the subject of perseverance.
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/perseverance

Happy Labor Day!
Rowena Cherry

The Lady Vanishes: Showing and Telling

A couple of weeks ago, PBS aired a new version of THE LADY VANISHES, previously filmed by Alfred Hitchcock. As you may remember, the story concerns a self-absorbed young Englishwoman who gets acquainted with a middle-aged, English spinster on a train in central Europe. When the woman, Miss Froy, disappears, everybody else on the train denies she ever existed. After watching the TV movie, I read the 1936 book it’s based on, THE WHEEL SPINS, by Ethel Lina White. It’s interesting to observe how the literary standards for “showing” and “telling” have changed over the decades.

The novel starts with an intriguing hook sentence: “The day before the disaster, Iris Carr had her first premonition of danger.” Then the omniscient narrator launches into two pages of exposition, telling us about idle rich orphan Iris’s background and personality, the carefree, irreverent, promiscuous “crowd” she calls her friends, and their interaction with the other patrons of the hotel in the remote European town where they’re vacationing. Although the polished writing style makes this exposition a pleasure to read, few editors would tolerate it nowadays. The author would dramatize this information in “cinematic” style, revealing it through dialogue and action the same way the movie does. It’s worth noting that some conversations dramatized in the film are written as indirect discourse in the book. (By the way, the next time you reread PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, notice how many of the conversations consist of indirect discourse rather than quoted dialogue.)

White's omniscient narrative voice reveals the thoughts and motives of other characters, and reflects on them, to a far greater extent than the movie script, which stays within Iris’s perspective most of the time. The most striking difference between book and film, though, is how the plot revelations are structured. In the movie we don’t learn the truth about Miss Froy’s existence and fate until the climax. At almost the exact middle of the book, the “black moment” when Iris decides everybody else is right and she imagined Miss Froy, the narrative shifts to England to reveal Miss Froy’s perfectly real parents and dog, eagerly awaiting her return. Later, we see Miss Froy in captivity, confirming (for the reader) the hero and heroine’s theory about her abduction long before the climactic rescue. This strategy switches the focus from Iris’s sane or deluded condition to the question of whether Miss Froy will be rescued in time to save her life. Thereby it transforms the story's genre from mystery (does Miss Froy exist, and what happened to her?) to suspense thriller (will Iris be able to find the missing woman before it’s too late?). The book and movie are equally exciting, but the movie maintains a surrealistic ambiguity the book abandons at the halfway point. It seems the author committed herself to this approach when she chose an omniscient narrative voice instead of a “tight third person” restriction to Iris’s awareness.

THE WHEEL SPINS, aka THE LADY VANISHES, is a gripping suspense adventure as well as an illustration of how an author’s decisions about voice and viewpoint interweave with the other elements of narrative.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Dialogue Part 6 - How to Write Bullshit Dialogue by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Dialogue Part 6 - How to Write Bullshit Dialogue  by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts in the Dialogue Series (yes, we'll get to "integration" of dialogue with other skills), can be found here:

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/12/dialogue-part-2-on-and-off-nose.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/03/dialogue-part-3-romance-erotica-vs-porn.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/08/dialogue-part-4-legal-weasel.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/11/dialogue-part-5-how-to-write-liar.html

That last one, Part 5, How to write liar dialogue, is most relevant to this post which is about something even worse than lies.

I was reading a newspaper (yeah, on paper, would you believe?) recently, in which I ran across two opinion pieces about diverse topics.  Each hung their main point on a non-fiction book.

I thought it interesting that one article pointed to the book, saying that there is something WORSE than lying, and that from the explanation I agreed! 

For the most part, you can't use this method to create dialogue because dialogue is not "speech" per se, not a simple transcription of the way people talk, but must be terse, to the point, off the nose, and  not be the author talking to the reader, but one character talking to another character.

However, when searching for a way to SHOW DON'T TELL a) the nature of a character and b) the gullibility of another character that will lead them into serious trouble, this method of dialogue generation will work very well.

Here's the book:



The thesis is that liars know the truth and are trying to cover it up, misdirect you, or otherwise convince you that the truth is not true.

Bullshitters, on the other hand, don't necessarily know the truth, and really couldn't care less what is true and what is not true.  Bullshitters are ramming their agenda into your head by saying whatever will make you do what they want you to do, regardless of whether it will benefit you, or even the bullshitter. 

The article also pointed out that the originator(s) of the bullshit dialogue may actually know it's not true, even if they don't know what the truth really is.  But those who have been bullshitted, and somehow absorb the message and become advocates of it, repeat the bullshit without fact-checking, without knowing the truth, and very possibly without knowing what agenda they are pushing!

Like gossip, bullshit takes on a life of its own.

As a result, a fiction writer can use this method of speech, discussed in the book above, to set up a plot involving character assassination.  Like a murder mystery, a character-assassination plot would have a FORM -- open form mystery, or closed form mystery.

In open form, the reader sees in the first scene who-done-it (if not how and why), and in closed form, the reader has to unravel the mystery with the detective.

Envision trying to use this "bullshit" method on Colombo -- or say, in current TV shows, Longmire.



I love Longmire's hat, and the way the camera director uses it.  But I love the underlying values of the heroic portrayal of this rural, 21st century, sheriff.  I love the modern Indian reservation and all their (rather authentic) modern day politics.  Longmire is a great show to watch -- and well written enough to learn dialogue writing by studying it, scene for scene.

So, no, a criminal is not going to get away with bullshitting Longmire!  (or Colombo).

You can also use this bullshit dialogue methodology to portray the various sides of the thematic issue you are using at the core of your composition. 

Use this blog's search-tool (on the right) to search for theme, and you'll get a lot of theme posts.  I have to make a long index of them eventually. 

The point I make in most of those posts on theme is that it is important to understand your theme, and to create characters who really believe (down to the core of their being) each side of the current arguments on that point in our current culture.

You can't fake it. 

You must actually understand where the people who loathe your own personal point of view are coming from, and for that little while that you are writing the dialogue of that character, you must be able to believe it.  Yes, it's kind of like "method acting."  You have to walk a mile in the moccasins of the characters who shun and despise your personal views, and argue their side of the matter with the character who is representing your view.

The best novels are the ones where there is no character who represents the author's personal views -- so there's no ax-grinding or polemics, no preaching, just good drama.

Which brings us to the second book I found mentioned in a printed on paper newspaper.

I wouldn't have noticed this book except for the roiling and embroiling issues raised by the SFWA Bulletin controversy, sparked by a hapless writer's blogpost (in ignorance of the SFWA issue), and then brought to sharp focus by Ann Aguirre's blog post which drew an instant splashback of several true "hate-speech" emails.  Yeah, Ann Aguirre drew hatespeech! 

Here's what I posted about this, which contains links so you can research this anti-SFR matter:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/theme-conflict-integration-part-1.html

So the following Friday, there was a #scifichat on twitter about the eruption of sexism in the science fiction community, and everyone was perfectly civil, used regular English, and tossed around some really thoughtful opinions.

It was astonishing how DIFFERENT the tone was.  The folks on #scifichat talk like the Science Fiction fans I grew up with and have known all my life.  The people directing hate at Ann Aguirre's blog post did not sound like anyone I'd ever met, and the stories the commenters brought to light of their own experiences likewise sounded like encounters out of the twilight zone.

So when I saw this article on an epidemic of hate online, and I remembered some of the nonsense language posts I've seen in comments on news articles (such as on Yahoo news, and other news posts that allow comments), I realized hate online could be viewed as an "epidemic."   These hate-language users represent one of those opinions I keep telling you that you need to include where appropriate in a story -- to use characters to present beliefs that you do not hold personally.

Here's the book on amazon:



Here's the blurb on Amazon:
Emboldened by anonymity, individuals and organizations from both left and right are freely spewing hateful vitriol on the Internet without worrying about repercussions. Lies, bullying, conspiracy theories, bigoted and racist rants, and calls for violence targeting the most vulnerable circulate openly on the web. And thanks to the guarantees of the First Amendment and the borderless nature of the Internet, governing bodies are largely helpless to control this massive assault on human dignity and safety. Abe Foxman and Christopher Wolf expose the threat that this unregulated flow of bigotry poses to the world. They explore how social media companies like Facebook and YouTube, as well as search engine giant Google, are struggling to reconcile the demands of business with freedom of speech and the disturbing threat posed by today’s purveyors of hate. And they explain the best tools available to citizens, parents, educators, law enforcement officers, and policy makers to protect the twin values of transparency and responsibility. As Foxman and Wolf show, only an aroused and engaged citizenry can stop the hate contagion before it spirals out of control—with potentially disastrous results. 

Note how many 1-star reviews it has pulled.  1-star is "I hate it." 

Look at Ann Aguirre's post (which has made her some new fans and readers!)

http://www.annaguirre.com/archives/2013/06/02/this-week-in-sf/

Look at the splashback emails she posted right at the end of her item. 

This newspaper article advanced the theory that the hatespeech you are seeing flood online venues is coming MOSTLY (not exclusively) from teenagers, and that parents need to police their teen's online behavior better to stop it.

I don't know if there's any value to that suggestion, or any truth at all to the allegation that it's teens -- but wouldn't it be (fictionally) interesting if the hate-email Ann Aguirre got wasn't from any professionals, active fans such as frequent #scifichat, or adults with considered opinions who are ticked off by the skyrocketing sales of SFR compared to the shrinking and shriveling sales of nuts-n-bolts SF?  What if she just hit a network of teens who love to "vandalize" blogposts with hatespeech and really have no idea what the subject actually is (and don't have the education to understand it even if someone explained it to them?)

Now that would make a CONFLICT for a novel -- and there's a theme integrated right into that conflict.  A Setting of Parenting -- especially single-parent parenting (the article I read pointed to single-parents who don't have TIME to police their kids)?

Can you see the various sides of the argument and how it fits into a Romance?

A woman struggling her way up in a traditionally mans' world profession, -- say widowed when her husband was killed in Iraq? -- and raising kids by herself.  Suitor #1 who has bought into the idea that single-parenting produces wayward kids.  Suitor #2 advocating casual live-together, but admiring her parenting skills - maybe more than her professional skills?  Which will she choose?  Or will she look for Suitor #3?  Or go the SINGLE route? 

Anyone watching THE GLADES?  Highly recommended -- not SF, but Detective Mystery -- Mystery-Romance.  Shows a man falling in love with a woman-single-parent-medical-student.



This issue - A Woman's Place In The World - and maybe even the very definition of woman and of "mother" - is under furious discussion in our world today, and criss-crosses the Religion borders like crazy.

This is a venue where you can set up any number of Romance Novels plotted around really hot screaming fights (Bullshit dialogue, Liar dialogue, Hatespeech dialogue) liberally laced with sex scenes.

In fact, such screaming fights would tend (in certain cultures) to skip from language to language.

Remember I LOVE LUCY, where Ricki shifts to Spanish when he gets mad?



Who are the really "hot" immigrants today?  What language to they shift into when exasperated? 

Remember, The Newcomers in Alien Nation?  There was Newcomer kid who as a teen became aculturated to Earth and joined a gang -- got himself in lots of trouble with his traditional parents for his LANGUAGE USE.




Now think about all this, and think about the hatespeech directed at Ann Aguirre not as anything to do with her work (those who HATE like that probably haven't read her books which are full of love overcoming the ugliest sides of our violent culture) -- but think of it as being a bigger problem that your readers are encountering in a lot of environments as they struggle to deal with things like being a single parent -- or dealing with kids of single parents who just aren't being properly parented, or some who are better parented than those from two-parent households.

Think of your broadest possible reach as a writer -- and see what you can do applying these dialogue techniques.

Try the classic exercise of putting two characters you know nothing about in a pitch black, can't see or touch each other, environment (a prison, a cave, an elevator in a blackout), and let them just TALK to each other.  All you have on your page is DIALOGUE - quotes, without description, just the names of the characters and all you can describe them with is what they say.

In fact, the classic-classic exercise is to write such a two-character dialogue without names, but just speech that is so distinctive the reader can tell who's talking without he-said, she-said.  In fact, one exercise is to write such an exchange in such a way that the reader can figure out which one is male and which female, without being told.

Read these books, look at these TV shows, all the while having in mind that you are going to use what you learn to construct such a "limbo set" dialogue exercise.

If you do this read/view/write exercise with enough determination, you may find yourself with the core scene of a dynamite novel.  But start first with the conversation in the dark exercise.  It's tough, but you'll learn a lot about the difference between dialogue and everyday talking.  This would work with a telephone conversation, too -- no videochat, just voice. 

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Intimate Adventure with Clay and Fire

I’ve just read one of the best historical fantasies I’ve ever come across, THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI, by Helene Wecker. (Amazingly, it’s the author’s first novel.)

The Golem and the Jinni

Both of the title characters are involuntary immigrants adrift in New York in 1899. The owner of the golem, Chava, died on the ship to America, leaving her masterless. The jinni, Ahmad, accidentally released from an antique copper flask, suffers under a curse cast centuries earlier in circumstances he can’t remember; an iron band on his arm traps him in human form and curtails some of his other powers. To survive in their new home, both must learn to live within human society, beginning with acceptance of the mundane names bestowed by the people who take them in. At first forced to adapt to human customs as camouflage, little by little Chava and Ahmad begin to internalize human behavior and feel emotions new to them.

These two creatures, one of earth (clay) and one of fire, meet by chance and become friends because they share a sense of being out of place in the mundane life of the city. Neither one sleeps, and their first meeting occurs during their nocturnal wanderings through the streets of New York. They can’t reveal the full truth of their natures to anyone but each other. They’re opposites in more ways than their elemental origins: The golem, created to serve a master’s needs, is driven to be useful, happiest when ceaselessly working, and restless without somebody to obey. The jinni, raging against the slavery to which he was bound against his will, is arrogant, volatile, averse to commitment, and often scornful of the mere mortals around him. Both have to keep secrets for their own safety. Yet both eventually form true friendships with some of the people they live among. Little by little, they learn about love—love of many varieties, not only romantic or erotic. Finally, for the welfare of their human companions, they take the risk of exposing their true natures, and both make sacrifices for those they care about. Chava learns to become an independent being, and Ahmad learns to serve the needs of others. This story is an outstanding example of Intimate Adventure.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Conflict Integration Part 1 Battle of the Sexes by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Conflict Integration Part 1 Battle of the Sexes

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Buzzing through the June 2013 kerfuffle started by a SFWA Bulletin cover (classic brass bras Warrior Woman image) and a blog post that ignited another explosion in the sexism wars, I've been surveying some of the blog entries by both men and women writers on the acceptance of SFR by SF writers. 

And of course, every day I spend a bit of time watching the TV news -- just for fun and inspiration.

And suddenly while watching the news after viewing an episode of NBC's J. J. Abrams REVOLUTION, the world flipped into a new focus. 

It was one of those "artist's eye" things I've been talking about here since I started discussing writing craft techniques one at a time.  (yes, we'll get to three at a time!). 

And I went, AHA!!! -- that's THEME-CONFLICT INTEGRATION!!! 

Trying to explain what I saw in a) our fictional environment b) our (allegedly) real world environment and c) our writer's marketing environment --- all three integrated, BANG in one 3-D vision -- is going to be a serious challenge.

But if you can grasp what I'm saying, then look at your world from your own personal point of view, you may become the one to launch this enormous breakthrough novel/film that we've been envisioning on this blog since I began the writing craft series here.

So you may want to review some of the elementary posts on structure, and where conflict fits into it all.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-2-master.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-3-game.html

There are hardly any posts I've done that don't involve the use of conflict to generate the plot (and everything else in a Romance Novel).

But you might want to review these:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/06/finding-story-opening-part-1-action-vs.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/06/finding-story-opening-part-2-avatar-and.html

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

Conflict is absolutely the hardest thing for writers to master.  Women have the hardest time with it, but I've seen men writers who just can't "get it" either.  It's a blind-spot common to both genders at the beginning of the learning curve.

Once you get conflict, you start selling even if your stuff is really bad, an embarrassment so bad that eventually you adopt another pen name because you don't want your current stuff associated with that old stuff.

Conflict is the essence of story, and has been since the beginning of story-telling as an art-form (think cave man fireside entertainment).

And yet, it is very hard to learn how to go about arranging the distinctive elements of your story around a core of a conflict to create a plot.

You know it when you see it in a novel or movie, and you love it, every time.  CONFLICT - WORKING OUT - RESOLUTION.  That is a highly commercial winning sequence every time, regardless of the content.

However, there is "throw away" entertainment -- what they once called "the pulps" -- cheaply produced magazines to read and toss, and there is classic literature.

The error that we, as Science Fiction Romance writers, have been trying to correct is the assumption that Romance is "pulp" and only pulp.  The assumption is that Romance is suitable only for lining bird cages and wrapping dead fish.  Oddly, that was always the assumption about science fiction.  Hmmm. 

It is an unconscious assumption, and our entire civilization is founded upon it. 

Once you see that manifesting in TV News, popular TV Series, and heated blog controversies over "sexism" you understand that we've been had.  Big time.

Like Science Fiction, Westerns, and many other genres so disparaged, Romance is not now and never has been "throw away" literature.  It is CLASSIC by it's very nature.

That fact is so terrifying that it is buried in the subconscious (Neptune, Pisces -- the best horror genre novels are fabricated out of NEPTUNE EVENTS (illusion) just as Romance Genre pivots on a Neptune Transit).  Buried in the collective subconscious, that fact about Romance being Classic Literature by its very nature is left to suppurate and rot us all out from the inside.

Do you see how I've taken a CONFLICT (the battle of the sexes over the prestige of Romance Genre) and edged it over into a THEME? 

Read the series of posts on Theme-Character Integration:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/06/theme-character-integration-part-1-what.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/07/theme-character-integration-part-2-fire.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/theme-character-integration-part-3-why.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/theme-character-integration-part-4.html

The process I just demonstrated, extracting a theme from a mishmosh of something else is discussed in those theme-character posts as is the crafting of the ending of a novel. 

The ending is the point in time where the theme is rammed down the character's throat and becomes totally assimilated, thus ending the story.  The ram is the Plot.  At the ending of a story, plot and story become indistinguishable.  That's how you know you are at an ending. 

One of the most often repeated errors beginning writers make is to start at the end.  And that's why beginners often can't grasp the difference between story and plot. 

To find the beginning of a story, you must train yourself to think backwards from an ending or a middle that first occurs to you to find the place in the story-arc where the story and the plot both begin.

And that same kind of backwards, inside-out thinking is useful in extracting a theme from "the world" as it exists in a mishmosh.

I had immediately noticed that the SFWA Bulletin cover controversy hit critical mass when the simple blog post
http://www.thestoryhub.ca/talking-sci-fi-romance/
ignited a firestorm.

And the firestorm was all about sexism -- in the SF community, and in the world in general.

Many horror stories emerged via comments on Ann Aguirre's simple and factual post about her experiences in associating with SF writers:
http://www.annaguirre.com/archives/2013/06/02/this-week-in-sf/

And the conversation became laced with outrage over sexism.  All the old tropes were trotted out for an aria or two center stage.  People complained that the same-old-same-old discussion was boring.

It is boring. 

As Theodore Sturgeon pointed out many decades ago, writing science fiction is all about training your mind to ASK THE NEXT QUESTION.  Don't just accept what is said.  Question everything.

That's how art (all fields) is done, and that is the drill that produces (a few times in a lifetime) those moments such as I described above where everything flipped into focus, AHA!  (such as when a character reaches THE END of the novel and the theme is rammed home by the plot events intruding into the story.)

People commented on the blogs with comparisons to 1953 -- saying that the women's movement had won in the 1970's so why are we fighting this battle over again?  And others commented on that view saying things like we just have to wait for the old guys to die off -- or we have to fire them. 

And others insisted this is a NEW WORLD.  Everything's changed (which I've been pointing out on this blog for a while now) and we won, we defeated the ugly monster of sexism, so therefore it is gone.  Why is it still here?

While reading commentary along those lines, I was thinking about J. J. Abrams (and the Star Trek movie, Star Trek: Into Darkness which I discussed here
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/07/theme-plot-integration-part-11-correct.html

And I was thinking of J. J. Abrams TV Series Revolution, and the news of the day (wall-to-wall-scandals lightly laced with murder trials and fresh new murders), and I was thinking of how we choose our (scandal prone) politicians for their sexy TV images rather than boring desk-jockey skills, and the next question occurred to me.

What if there is not now and never has been any such thing as a Battle of the Sexes?

That could explain why it is absolutely "un-winnable."  It does not exist.  It is an illusion of Neptune.

If you haven't read the posts on Astrology Just For Writers -- the whole Neptune and Pluto relevance is explained in these posts which are listed in this post:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

Note the fellow who claimed responsibility for the NSA security leak involving data collection is a 29 year old.  That's the year of the Saturn Return (when Saturn gets back to the place it was when you were born -- happens to everyone at that age, and every 29 years thereafter).  The first Saturn Return is notorious for having certain kinds of dramatic effects (being an Ending and a Beginning just like in novels). 

Knowing the clues in those posts on Astrology makes character creation and plotting very easy.

This Question -- what if ...?  Is the core-essence of Science Fiction.  Thinking out of the box, daring to ask the un-askable, the un-thinkable. 

It is an unthinkable question because throughout recorded history, and as far as anyone can tell from pre-history, males and females have always been at war, and we all accept without question that sex and violence are related.  There must be dominance in sex, right?  Must! 

Throughout the Middle Ages (the model for so much Fantasy-Romance with Kings, Queens, handsome Dukes, etc.) The Church kept women subjugated because of the story of Adam and Eve, which (to them) clearly says Eve was a bitch who tricked Adam, and therefore all women are Evil.

In the USA, we had to fight (FIGHT!!!) for the right to vote, have a bank account in our own name, etc. etc. 

Now the fight is over abortion, equality in marriage, and equal pay for equal work.

Where does it end?  What does Victory actually look like? 

This Battle of the Sexes is like the wars in the Middle East where we hammered two countries to smitherines, then tried to get soldiers who specialize in killing people to "nation build."  And then we leave, unilaterally proclaiming victory.  Huh? 

They coined a phrase to describe this process that we see in The Battle Of The Sexes.  Mission Creep.  Politicians call it "Progressivism" -- and I call them scam artists (like guys who just want to get you into bed, and leave when they get bored).  Move on dot Sex! 

I discussed grifters a little bit here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/02/tv-shows-leverage-and-psych.html

It's a scam.  The Battle of the Sexes is a scam just like on the TV Series Leverage -- a 21st Century version of the old Mission: Impossible.   

One of the principles of running a game on a mark is that you must rivet the mark's attention AWAY FROM what you're doing -- like a stage magician, prestidigitation. 

To do this, you create a problem for them -- it's not real, it doesn't exist, so it can't be solved, but while they're busy trying to solve it with increasing urgency as you "play" them, you have a clear field to steal everything they have.

In the case of the Battle of the Sexes, what is being stolen is Identity. 

Your strength, your ability to cope with the world and stay alive in it, is based on your sense of individuality.  Take that away, and you are helpless - a mark ripe for the grifter's art.

If you want to understand the world: Follow The Money.

Or to solve a Murder Mystery, find out who benefits from the death.  Motive; Method; Opportunity.

Our mystery is Who Is Running This Scam? 

Apparently, both males and females are the Marks.  So who's the Identity Thief?

Who's playing "Let's You And Him Fight?" 



Someone is cleaning up, big time.  Bet on it.

Money, as I discussed in the Tarot Just For Writers posts, is a form of Power. 

Here are the Tarot posts in case you missed them.

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

To understand power intoxication, read this non-fiction book I reviewed in depth under DIALOGUE titled How To Write Liar Dialogue:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/11/dialogue-part-5-how-to-write-liar.html

The principle used by the best grifters is that the mark must never know he's being played until the coups.  Then he falls down to the mud, head spinning, utterly paralyzed with the realization that he's been had.

Are we there yet? 

Are we aware we been had? 

Because that's THE END of this novel -- that's the point where the theme is rammed home into the guts of the story by the ram of the plot events.

Or are we waking up in the middle of the scam, not yet had, not YET fleeced?  Do we have a chance to turn the tables?

There's a massive, blockbuster Romance theme in that idea of turning the tables on the grifter running The Battle of the Sexes, but if you try to write it outside SFR or Paranormal Romance, you will have a hard time selling it -- because it will be deemed implausible. 

If you don't think The Battle of the Sexes is a scam yet, find another explanation for the entire kerfuffle over that SFWA Bulletin cover and a reasonably innocent blog post by a guy who apparently is being played by the grifters behind this thing. 

Why is the Battle of the Sexes unwinnable if it is a battle at all and not a scam?

If it isn't a setup, if we're not being had, then what would the world be like after one side or the other WINS? 

Post-apocalyptic is very popular right now -- J. J. Abrams TV Series, REVOLUTION being only one of many examples.  Think of all the zombie stuff that nearly took over the world.  We are obsessed with "what will happen after all this falls apart?" 

What if the apocalypse is not vampires, zombies, werewolves, EM Pulse attacks, nano-whatevers?  What if the apocalypse is "we been had."  What happens after that?

Here are some comments I made online that convinced me to try to start this Theme-Conflict Integration series now instead of next year. 

http://www.facebook.com/groups/130939813657941/permalink/469377513147501/

Jacqueline Lichtenberg: If there really is no difference in capability and potential, in respect due for accomplishment, between male & female humans, then why is every comment on this issue based on the assumption that there is a difference? If we believe what we're preaching, we should behave accordingly. There IS NO SUCH THING as "sexism" because it's based on a false premise. So to "fight back" as if the enemy has a case is to legitimize that case. We shouldn't be fighting. We should be explaining, as Starla Huchton pointed out -- because THEY HAVE NO CLUE WHAT THEY'RE DOING WRONG.


Jacqueline Lichtenberg: Consider the 'glass houses' issue, and first ask yourself what WE are doing wrong. Certainly we can't be entirely correct on every underlying issue in the SF vs SFR confrontation? Find the hole in our argument, fix it, then explain to "them" where the hole is in their argument. We should do a workshop at a con where everyone has read the same pair of novels demonstrating the dichotomy, and explain where both sides are right, and where both sides are making errors.


Jacqueline Lichtenberg: Look on Ann Aguirre's blog entry comment 387 by Carole Ann. She is from the UK. CONSIDER women are proven just as capable of being techs, and we read the SF-war-stories just as avidly, love ACTION (there is such a thing as action-romance, I hope you've noticed!), and we have attracted a number of men into reading, writing and discussing SFR. Think about what Carole Ann told us in that comment -- How can you win a "war of the sexes" and it not be a Pyrrhic Victory? The whole point of Romance is men and women love each other, fit together, make dynamite teams. Somewhere in History someone suckered us into thinking in terms of War. Do we have to let "them" (whoever they were) set our agenda? http://www.annaguirre.com/archives/2013/06/02/this-week-in-sf/

And from Gini Koch's blog
http://www.sliceofscifi.com/2013/06/06/its-time/ 

Gini Koch says she has nothing to prove, and I think she's nailed it.  There is no controversy, there is no war of the sexes, there is NO CONFLICT here and thus NO STORY.

by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Killing Characters

I finally got around to reading THE GAME OF THRONES (and watching the first episode of the TV series). You’ve probably heard the joke that goes, “George Martin’s Twitter account got canceled because he killed off all 140 characters,” and from only the first installment of the series, I understand the joke. How do you feel about the deaths of major characters? Not in a work labeled as tragedy, where it’s expected, but in other kinds of dramatic fiction? Sometimes letting a protagonist meet a heroic end works, as in THE ROBE, where Christian converts Marcus and Diana joyfully embrace martyrdom on the final page. However, that kind of scenario violates most readers’ expectations of most novels.

Lots of people die in GONE WITH THE WIND (after all, much of it takes place during a war), including Melanie, a major character. She’s still a secondary character, though, and her death has a critical, plot-justified impact on the development of Scarlett, the protagonist. I had a different feeling about the death of Duncan’s beloved Tessa in the HIGHLANDER TV series. Not that I couldn’t accept having the hero’s lover die as a contribution to his character development, but that her fate was so pointless. Immediately after getting rescued from the villain, she got murdered in a mugging. This incident was probably intended to reflect the randomness of real life, but I found it dramatically unsatisfying. J. K. Rowling killed Harry Potter, but not really. If Harry’s sacrifice had resulted in his permanent death, readers would have been outraged—justly, in my opinion. In a seven-book saga centered on a single protagonist, the author has an implied contract with the audience to reward the hero’s efforts and sufferings. How about a novel with an ensemble cast, such as GAME OF THRONES? I was shocked when the closest that novel has to a main protagonist, and one of the few thoroughly admirable persons in the cast of characters, got killed off at the whim of a tyrant. (I won’t go into further detail in case you haven’t read the book.)

In a “nobody is safe” fictional universe, do you appreciate the realism of knowing anybody can die, just as in real life? Or does the death of a central character turn a book into a wall-banger for you?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt