Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 8 - Use of Statistics by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 8
Use of Statistics
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Here is Part 7 of this series on Theme-Worldbuilding Integration, titled Another Use of Media. 
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-7.html

That post has a link to Part 6 which contains links to previous parts.  Here we will build on those posts. 

Part 7 is about a Fortune Magazine article about "The One Percent" of our population (a statistics based argument).  I found that article in a magazine in a doctor's waiting room, which led to a conversation with a young woman who plays videogames. 

Statistically, women videogame players are a minority, but in the 40% range.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/gaming/2013/06/12/women-50-percent-gaming-audience/2411529/

Marketers use statistics like this to shape the creation and packaging of products (like novels, for example) and to "Target an Audience" with advertising.  We've discussed targeting audiences at some length and will no doubt return to that topic:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/index-to-targeting-readership-series-by.html

Back in November 2013, a story broke in the Washington Post that caught my eye.

http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/new-york-post-claims-census-falsifies-unemployment-figures-5436

And here is a set of graphs about employment trends statistically broken down:
http://www.economicpopulist.org/comment/reply/5210

It was a report, which called into question the accuracy of statistics released by a government agency -- a statistic which large numbers of people may have used to decide whether Barak Obama had done a good enough job rescuing the economy to deserve re-election. Later push-back pointed out how these numbers are produced by being passed from hand to hand across agencies, and that the career civil service employees really do take getting accurate figures together seriously.  This would be very hard to disrupt.  So the question becomes why did the Washington Post print that story in the midst of the Obamacare website disaster and not sooner? 

Dancing a political candidate through a "campaign" is all about packaging a product and targeting the market for that product (ignoring the 1% because they don't count, majority rules so the 1% are powerless.)

Marketers call this packaging and targeting "messaging."  You have to use the right keywords to get your message to "resonate" -- e.g. to get retweeted, or repeated as fact, even if what you're saying is not fact. 

For example: "Reverse mortgages are safe and effective" is the message, but the fine print says that you will own your house only until the last owner leaves.  That means if you are 92, get thrown into a nursing home against your will for 6 months, you thereupon have no home to go back to if you should violate statistics and survive incarceration in a nursing home.  ROMANCE NOVEL: Gal's grandmother incarcerated, loses home, gets well, has no place to live unless Gal throws her live-in-Guy out.  Now what?

Political Strategists determine what "messaging" keywords to use via statistics generated from "Focus Groups."  All of this is a use of the power of Science to manipulate people using knowledge of what those people do not know -- ignorance is bliss, and blissful people don't rebel. 

Remember this post is about Theme-Worldbuilding Integration and that idea, that "blissful people don't rebel" is an example of a theme cast as worldbuilding, fully integrated. 

A government statistical release is a "package."  It is "Messaging" packaged to be believed, because who would distrust a "non-political" department of government staffed by Civil Service employees who of course have no political opinions of their own.

If you hire a publicist who hates Romance to publicize your book, would you trust their "messaging" about your book to your audience? 

That's not a rhetorical question: it is what publishers do by assigning novels to their publicity department, staffed by people hired by their Human Resources department folks whose degrees are not in Romance Writing.  Such publicists are very likely well schooled in statistics and Public Relations courses abound in their C.V.

If you haven't studied the formulae used to generate statistics such as the Labor Department or Census Department release, studied the vast array of "assumptions" taken as "fact" when generating the numbers, and exactly which direction to reason from the numbers, you may come to incorrect conclusions.

At some point, we must discuss that 1% from Part 7 of this series on Theme-Worldbuilding Integration again because that 1% statistic is at the heart of this culture's entire sense of "right vs. wrong" and who can and should do what to fix it.  That is a massive theme and a huge conflict we can use to great advantage in galactic Romance, and it is salient to the development of Paranormal Romance novels because the concept of "Right vs. Wrong" bespeaks the mystical view of the universe.

For example, speaking of that 1%, I have just read a wondrous Romance novel, Girl of My Dreams by Morgan Mandel:



Girl of My Dreams is about a TV show where 25 women vie for the favor of a male Billionaire.  It's a contest and the prize is potential marriage to a Billionaire (1%-er)who happens to be quite a hunk, too.  This is a novel worth studying in conjunction with Part 7 of this series on Theme-Worldbuilding Integration. 

So back to the boring concept of Statistics and what a Romance writer can do with it.

People use statistics as an accurate picture of the entire world around them because statistics produce accurate predictions -- such as the outcome of an election via exit polls --  and if their own experience is at variance with the picture, they assume "It's just me."

For example, if the candidate you voted for doesn't win, you assume "everybody" voted for the other candidate.  Statistics don't lie.  You are the 1% on that issue.  You are the oddball.  You don't count. 

That is a CONFLICT, an Internal Conflict,  -- the exact type of CONFLICT that is at the heart of every story, and especially at the heart of a good Romance because it's all about self-perception vs. your perception of others and what that conflict implies about whether you should change yourself -- or change others. 

That conflict is HUMAN vs. NATURE -- where in this instance what passes for "Nature" isn't grass and trees, storms and earthquakes, but "society."  "NATURE" is the general environment that we never notice - the air we breathe, water we drink, people creating the traffic jam we have to penetrate to get to work on time.

Road engineering is done not just from physics (to calculate degree of embankment on curves) but commuter volume statistics which is as political as employment statistics.

There's a Hollywood adage that explains why low-budget pictures don't get made. 

"You can't steal a million dollars from a million dollar movie budget." 

It's a principle you can use to understand the political component of building commuter roads based on employment statistics and "expectations."  We set, using statistics, a certain percentage of every large-budget project to shrug off as a loss due to "waste, fraud and abuse."  There's a percentage of "we can't account for it" and "miscelaneous" in every budget.  The larger the budget, the larger the absolute value of that number.

That principle is one way writers can implant a statistical theme into their Worldbuilding.

If your Lead Male is an engineer building a road or a website, his job depends on the size of the budget of that project, and his management of that budget to disallow "waste, fraud and abuse" in excess of a certain percentage -- a percentage set by political considerations, but excused by statistics.

If your theme is "Honesty is the Best Policy" then your Lead Female becomes the woman who is, maybe the Auditor for that project or for some agency -- or maybe for a political candidate's campaign looking for dirt on the incumbents who launched your Lead Male's project.

Do you see now why STATISTICS is a matter of Ultimate Concern to Romance Writers?

If your Lead Male accepts that his bosses "know" the correct percentage to allow for "waste, fraud and abuse" (and maybe wants his own cut of that percentage), and your Female Lead is convinced the correct percentage for "waste, fraud and abuse" is zero, you have a Hot Conflict. 

Which one will prove their idea is correct?  What would the other take as proof their own idea is wrong?  Is it Evil to compromise on a Principle?  Is this percentage a Principle -- or a political whitewash?  Ultimately, what do you let the hottest lover you have ever had in your life get away with, just to keep them in your bed?   

Our perception of our environment is shaped by whatever information flows through our conscious and subconscious awareness (today: the internet news stream does a lot of the shaping.)

I've noted in this blog on writing craft that a savvy writer has to monitor headlines for the context in which their readers actually live, and use what the reader already "knows" whether it's true or not, but craft the ART behind the story that's being written in such a way as to reveal something new. 

If the artist thinks the audience believes incorrectly, and writes a story only to correct the audience's misconceptions - the work will fail as a story. 

If the artist understands what the audience believes, and understands many other points of view from the inside, then the artist can depict the contrast between these various beliefs as CONFLICT. 

When each character speaks sincerely and convincingly from a unique point of view, the conflict among the characters leaves the audience with a question.  The audience members are each free to decide what the answer is, or ought to be.

That clear, convincing presentation of opposite sides of an argument (say about the project management's ability to eliminate "waste, fraud and abuse" entirely) will make the novel or story "resonate" -- i.e. get tweeted and retweeted about. 

The audience won't come out of reading the story with the same opinion as the writer, but they will memorize that writer's byline or subscribe to their releases on Amazon.

See last week's post, Reviews Part 4, for more on following a byline:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/01/reviews-4-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

Capturing of a reader's attention to the point where the reader memorizes and follows a byline is what the Artist does art for.

Art is done by rearranging the bits and pieces a reader already takes for granted, or does not realize that they know in order to show the reader a new picture that is interesting.

Here is a post in the series on what makes a story "interesting."

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/story-springboards-part-4-art-of.html

There is a rampant assumption loose in the world today that can be used to magnificent advantage by a fiction-artist.

That assumption, which is taught by and supported by the National Curriculum called "Common Core" (a product of the Bill Gates Foundation and Microsoft who definitely do know better), is that statistics can and should be applied BACKWARDS.

What does that mean?  Statistics is a mathematical gadget that manipulates numbers derived from observing specific attributes distributed across a "population."

The "population" sliced and diced by statisticians may or may not share other characteristics.

Statistics have proven such accurate predictors of the behavior of large populations of otherwise dissimilar individuals (people, yes, but this would apply to non-humans as well) that people use those numbers to create their opinions.

And a growing number of young adults are using statistics reports "backwards."

Using statistics forwards means collecting data on individuals and predicting how large numbers of individuals will move together in the same direction.

For example: how many iPads will Apple sell in the next six months?  How many people will upgrade from a Samsung to an iPad (and think it's an UPgrade?).

Those are questions statistics can answer accurately.

Will you upgrade from a Samsung or Kindle to an iPad and think it an UPgrade?

Statistics can't answer that.  It would be using statistics "backwards" to predict your behavior based on the behavior of a majority, or even a significant minority of people "just like you."

But your friend you go to lunch with at work might use released statistics to make a confident assumption about your future behavior.  That lunch conversation can become the core of a novel's conflict by Integrating that THEME (working statistics backwards) into the WORLDBUILDING (contemporary Romance).

For example, the lunch-friend is a Guy your Gal really wants to go out with on a real Date.  He makes this swaggering, sweeping prediction about her trashing her Kindle for an iPad.  She scoffs.  She wants him.  She buys an iPad and flashes it around the office.  He approves and crows his triumphant I TOLD YOU SO.  She pretends he's right.  He invites her out.  At work the next day, he overhears her scorning her iPad to a girlfriend, but praising him as a fabulous Date.

That's a THEME-Worldbuilding integrated CONFLICT. 

It is also a Story Springboard, not the whole story.  It's up to you to finish the story. 

Here is Part 6 of Story Springboards with links to previous parts:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/12/story-springboards-part-6-earning.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Stories and Realism

Cory Doctorow’s column in this month’s LOCUS, titled “Cheap Writing Tricks,” begins with some observations about plot:

Cheap Writing Tricks

He contrasts the randomness of events in real life with the “tidiness and orderliness” of stories. A plot is what you get, as he puts it, when you “draw a line around a set of circumstances” and designate those events as part of a single story with a beginning, middle, end, and climax. Although the “line” that marks the boundaries of a story is “completely arbitrary,” yet “a story that lacks this arbitrariness feels arbitrary.” We don’t get pleasure from reading about a miscellaneous succession of things happening with no apparent point, even though “reality” seems to work that way.

Doctorow’s comments remind me of a well-known line from classical literary philosophy, Aristotle’s principle that a writer should choose a plausible impossibility over an implausible possibility. When I brought up this quote during an oral exam in graduate school, one of the professors asked something like, “What if Oedipus had dropped dead of a heart attack in the middle of OEDIPUS REX?” Clearly, such an incident would make an unsatisfactory tragedy, even though random, sudden death happens all the time in our mundane existence. But we want a larger-than-life figure such as Oedipus to receive “poetic justice” for his misdeeds.

When a writer does something like that in an apparent attempt to make fiction or drama more “realistic,” we typically aren’t pleased; we feel cheated—at least, I do. In the HIGHLANDER series, for instance, Duncan and his sidekick, Richie, rescue Duncan’s beloved Tessa from kidnappers. In the final scene of the episode, while Richie and Tessa wait for Duncan on the street near the villains’ hideout, she gets killed by a mugger. Probably the script was trying to show that nobody is safe and disaster can strike out of nowhere at any second. What it actually did, from my perspective as a viewer, was pull a “twist” ending out of thin air, with no organic connection to the rest of the plot, robbing Tessa’s death of the dignity she “deserved” as a major character.

“Anybody can die” books and TV series produce an illusion of “reality” by refusing to grant any character immunity from the hazards of the fictional world. Usually, however, writers of those series kill off characters in ways that feel meaningful. Tara’s murder on BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER came as a surprise, yet it did arise logically from the conflict between Warren (the killer) and Buffy’s Scooby Gang. When Ned Stark died in GAME OF THRONES, I was shocked at losing a central character so early in the series, but his fate made sense in plot terms; it grew out of the choices he’d made.

If I want “reality,” I’ll read nonfiction or watch a documentary. And even in those kinds of works, the creator imposes a shape on his or her material. Human minds have a deeply ingrained need to make sense of the world through narrative.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Reviews 4 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg - "Taxi! Follow That Byline!"

Reviews 4
by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
"Taxi! Follow That Byline!"

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

First thing, I'd like to point you to a blog -- this happens to be an entry by Heather Massey, and it's about the Sime~Gen Game I've mentioned here a number of times, the one taking Sime~Gen (an SF series of mine with Jean Lorrah) into its space age.

http://www.heroesandheartbreakers.com/blogs/2013/11/romancing-the-video-game

I'm expecting to have more news about that game for you this year.

So now to today's lessons in writing. 


Previous entries in this "reviews" series of blogs are here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/reviews-1-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/reviews-2-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/12/reviews-3-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

I was in a school library a few days ago and asked the school librarian if they still teach kids to follow particular bylines when they find something they like.

I had decided I rather liked that library.  It had a higher book-density than our public library currently has, and had the books shelved by genre, with very good books featured prominently.

OK, being a writer, I know that the way certain writers and titles get that treatment in school libraries is to be reviewed in School Library Journal etc -- and that only one or two titles of a publisher's monthly output are sent to those special reviewers.

So a school library (or a public one; same deal) does not present a legitimate cross section of what's available, or even what's good or what's advisable.  That's what parents are for.  But the school library is the hook to get kids reading for fun -- which leads to reading for profit and reading easily enough to be able to take in and understand complex subjects necessary to earn a living.

However, I discovered (as is usual in my career) that the school librarian was a science fiction/fantasy FAN -- and did a lot of work with the local used book store, too.  She knew her stuff, and the field.  (Yes, I handed her a Sime~Gen promo flyer.)

We had a great conversation, and I learned that at least this one librarian is dedicated to teaching kids to FOLLOW THAT BYLINE! 

Today, since we haven't yet recovered from all the Holiday Cheer, and maybe you have some gift cards left from stocking stuffers, I'm going to point you to some books well worth their cover price, that I think you will benefit from reading.

These books are recent entries in series, or by writers who've done series.  Some are recognizably Romance, others have driving dynamics using our principles without hitting the reader over the head with ideas and attitudes the reader wouldn't find amusing.  Sample and you'll find many more books to read in that series.

First lets look at Simon R. Green's Ghost Finders Novels -- this is one series in a Universe which Green has been writing other series in. 

Spirits From Beyond



Spirits From Beyond has the velocity and format of a YA.  It's a very simple "adventure" by a ghost-hunting group that is involved in peeling away very complicated layers of the facade of reality to solve the puzzle of what it all means -- and who is masterminding this mess.  The ongoing story is told in these small, ultrasimplified increments.  The other series are not at all YA.  Taken together, the novels display a universe background as rich and complex as Heinlein's multiverse.

The story relies heavily on visuals, and thus gives the impression of being a set of novels trying to become a YA TV Series (somewhat like Buffy). 

Green is not particularly great at characterization or dialogue, but is very strong on simplified structure.  For that reason, all these books under his byline are well worth careful dissection by the Romance writing student.

Susan Sizemore (one of my all-time favorite writers since I first encountered her fan fiction about the TV Vampire Series FOREVER KNIGHT) has a Vampire Hunter novel set in Chicago -- replete with the politics and warfare tactics of Demons, Vampires, and mortals. 



Read anything you can find by Susan Sizemore.

And I say the same about Ann Aguirre.

Ann is starting a new series, but here is one in her Corine Solomon series -- read all these series starting with the 1st novel in them.  Aguirre's writing skills are top notch, and her story material is right on target for the Romance reader who wants stories about feisty women (just like themselves) instead of wimps. 

But Aguirre also explores the feisty female spirit faced with living as a woman who is somewhat "different" -- having telepathic or magical Talent, or some other attribute that just makes life's problems require a different set of solutions.



Aguirre has a number of series, so just dip in and sample whatever strikes you as interesting.  I'm a particular fan of her space-adventure series about Sirantha Jax.

Now we come to an interesting writer.  She's an actress you probably remember from Buffy The Vampire Slayer (has had other roles, but that's the one readers of this blog will likely know).

This is Amber Benson, and she used her acting talents and experience to start selling Fantasy Novels.  I ran into her on twitter, and gobbled up the novels in her Calliope Reaper-Jones series -- starting with Daughter of Death.

That's a title which is a real eye-stopper.  It doesn't LOOK like the title of a Romance, but this is a Romance driven story.  The main character, Calliope is the daughter of the holder of the office called Death (and is in charge of the dead and the causing of dying).

It's a story of family, inheritance, inherited talents, responsibility -- and how all those things tend to conflict with one's love-life. 

In this growing series, Amber Benson weaves a long, complicated story against a deep, complex background, and pulls off all the nuances with grace and aplomb. 

Like Buffy, the premise and the universe is "dark" but the characters are of the "light" side of Nature.



And here's the most interesting part! 

In 2013, I was invited to contribute an essay to a non-fiction book about fan fiction.

Here's the book - released Nov 26, 2013:


I did my essay, and several rewrites as the book took shape, and when the contributors list finally appeared in the promotional materials, I discovered that both Amber Benson and Rachel Caine were also contributors.

At that time, Rachel Caine (whom I also knew via twitter) was involved in a Kickstarter for a webisode series based on her Morganville Vampire series (which I also recommend to you)



The Kickstarter made its goal, and the webisode production is in development.

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!!!! 

Amber Benson is starring in the webisodes!!!! 

Now do you see why you have to "Follow That Byline!"

To understand your field - the Romance Novel and the Romance Genre - you must understand the people and their relationships to each other. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

New Year's Greetings

Did you stay up Tuesday night to watch the ball drop? Do you make annual resolutions?

Rationally speaking, it seems pointless to make a big fuss over New Year’s Eve, since the beginning of the year is a completely arbitrary, human-made date. Various cultures have chosen many different dates for the first day of the year. The original Roman calendar had ten months and began with March. The Jewish New Year is celebrated in September. The Chinese New Year falls in late January or early February. Some other Asian cultures observe New Year’s in April. Samhain (November 1) is considered to be the Celtic New Year. So there’s nothing especially natural or inevitable about marking the start of a new solar cycle and making resolutions on the first of January rather than any other day.

Personally, I gave up on “resolutions” a long time ago. I do have “goals” for 2014, though, mainly related to writing projects I want to accomplish.

How to have luck in the coming year: Do you eat black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day? Even though my grandmother came from North Carolina, I didn’t know about this Southern custom until my husband introduced it to me. It’s supposed to ensure prosperity for the coming year (the peas represent coins, I think). In Spain, eating twelve grapes at midnight on New Year’s Eve signifies twelve happy months to come. The Scottish Hogmanay celebration includes neighbors calling on each other with good wishes shortly after midnight. It’s especially good luck if the “first footer” (first visitor to the home) of the New Year is a tall, dark man. Sharyn McCrumb wrote a funny story about the first footer to a Scottish-American home being a burglar. The daughter of the house, a police officer, comes home from her late shift and arrests him.

According to our family’s tradition, it is good luck to eat dinner at a nice restaurant early enough to get home long before the party-goers hit the roads.

My parents always took down the Christmas tree on New Year's Day. We gave up that depressing custom years ago. Our tree stays up until Epiphany; I don't even start dismantling it until then. (Because it's artificial, we don't have to worry about dried-out needles.) New Year's Day in our house is a quiet time of relaxation.

Arbitrary date or not, New Year’s Eve provides an excuse to drink champagne. I’m all in favor of that! So Happy New Year to all!

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Plot-Subtext Integration Part 2: Ruining The Romance With Words by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Plot-Subtext Integration Part 2:

Ruining The Romance With Words 

by 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Today we'll examine a terrific novel in a picture-perfect series from Ace Science Fiction  which I just absolutely love -- but find myself gritting my teeth over certain brief scenes that are actually the core of the matter for me.

I will include "spoilers" -- we're talking here about the 11th novel in a series, and no way can you discuss that without revealing where those previous 10 have been leading. 

These scenes score an "epic fail" for me because of the sour note in the Romance thread of the plot. 

Why? 

What could a writer do about it? 

A lot, and it would be easy and not make the book longer. 

Previously in this blog series on writing craft, we've discussed Dialogue with special focus on invective.

Here is a post from 2009 which opens the issue of dialogue with a broad overview.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/02/expletive-deleted-tender-romance.html

It refers to a previous series of posts on Verisimilitude vs. Reality where we examined how "dialogue" differs from the way people just talk in real life.  Dialogue is not "real speech." Writers watch a lot of television and/or movies to develop an "ear" for the difference.

We have also discussed dialogue from other angles. It is part of characterization, pacing, plotting, foreshadowing, choosing a title, description, narrative, and of course conflict.  In fact, dialogue integrates all the techniques we've discussed here separately.

Here are some previous posts about dialogue:

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

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

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/01/theme-plot-integration-part-4-fallacies.html

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

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

The magnificent writer whose work I'm going to criticize here is Mike Shepherd, a military Science Fiction writer I admire.  He has replicated, in modern writing, the style and rhythm of the 1940's science fiction writers.  This is a tremendous feat!

I read a lot of these very old novels as I grew up, and saw nothing wrong. 

As a teen, I hated "Romance" genre novels because they were about stupid people doing stupid things for stupid reasons.  Romance has GROWN UP since then, and now we have the kick-ass heroine who won't take "no" for an answer, and we also have women who are hackers, gamers, research scientists, and even military commanders.

Mike Shepherd has created a character for an interstellar war era who comes from a line of military leaders who have risen to be crowned "King" of multiple star systems.

This family line is surnamed Longknife. 

Shepherd has created a galaxy-spanning human civilization which, as humans will do, has split into human vs. human to hold a war or three. 

In the meantime, this civilization has encountered aliens, conducted long and complex war against them, and settled the conflict (maybe not permanently, but things are looking good at the moment.)

Shepherd has extended the human life-span and created artificial intelligence computers and a material for warcraft hulls he has TRADEMARKED the name of "Smart Metal" (so other writers can't use this term.)  This is magnificent work. 

Shepherd has several series set in this vast universe, and today we are focusing on the 11th in the series, the 2013 release, Kris Longknife: DEFENDER by Mike Shepherd from Ace Science Fiction.

The previous titles in the Kris Longknife Series are, in order:
Mutineer
Deserter
Defiant
Resolute
Audacious
Intrepid
Undaunted
Redoubtable
Daring
Furious
and in 2013, Defender

Slated for October 2014 is Kris Longknife: Tenacious, followed by another novel that takes up the doings of one of Kris's main foes who became an ally, then a filling in of the backstory of the war fought by Kris's father and grandfather. 

These other three people are tremendous, colorful characters -- but they don't grab my interest as Kris Longknife does.  I'll give them a try, though, because Shepherd is a great writer.

Kris Longknife starts out in Mutineer as a slip of a girl, just out of school and taking the stage in her life.

Her ancestors are Kings, her whole family has a reputation for making trouble, for getting people killed, for doings that have the massive signature of Pluto Transit Events.

Natal Pluto position in a birth chart is one of several signatures necessary to produce Fame, Infamy, A Place In The History Books (not a footnote size one either).  Pluto magnifies whatever it forms an aspect with -- hard aspects produce vast results that get noticed.

If you've followed my discussions on how a writer can use Astrology to structure a character or plot that readers can grasp at a glance, you know that these natal chart formations actually form family-signatures -- yes, astrological charts show family tendencies.

I used that well known (but unnoticed by most people) fact to create the Farris Family Reputation ("Every Farris Makes Headlines At Least Once In Life") for the Sime~Gen Series. 

Said another way, "The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From The Tree." 

This inheritable factor is the subject of all kinds of folk-sayings, and is just common knowledge.  So writers can use this to plot multi-generation tales.

I doubt Mike Shepherd has studied Astrology, but he has portrayed that Pluto driven natal chart feature of The Warrior-King perfectly. 

Kris Longknife starts out at the beginning of this series with people trying to kill her -- assassinate might be a more accurate term, considering she's scion of this Royal family.

Along the way, she develops a sizzling-hot relationship with her bodyguard who routinely saves her life -- she does her share of saving, too.  In fact, she saves planets, civilization, humanity, even aliens -- big things. 

The point of view stays nicely inside Kris's head, and we see all these problems through her eyes -- we see how she muddles through, assesses and takes risks, congratulates herself when she makes a good call, and aches all over when she gets people killed.

But that's the "Longknife" pattern -- people standing anywhere near her get killed, but she survives (without doing anything to make that happen.)

The few people who do stand near her and survive with her become our friends and win our affections, too.  They are well drawn characters with depth, focus, and values we can admire.

So though this series is mostly about battle strategy and tactics, about politics, revolution, (or revolution thwarted), assassinations, face-saving, and engineering miracles on the fly, all these larger-than-life things are happening TO very real, very deep and sensitive Characters. 

And all of this magnificence is accomplished despite really bad dialogue writing.

What's bad about it?

It is what Blake Snyder labels (in his SAVE THE CAT! series on screenwriting) "on the nose" dialogue. 

"On the nose" is the opposite of "sub-text."

"On the nose" means when you "hit the nail on the head" or say something explicitly, in spades, flat out factual recitation.  "On the nose" means no allusions, allegories, symbolism, misdirection, sarcasm, white lies, but just meaning exactly what you say.

"Subtext" on the other hand means that the utterance contains vocabulary, subject matter, and perhaps plot references (i.e. references to actions under consideration) that have absolutely nothing to do with what the Characters are actually discussing and they both know it.

Good romance is rife with "subtext" and resorts to only one on-the-nose utterance -- which is that final, angst-ridden admission of a by-then-obvious truth, "I love you."

The writing craft term "subtext" means that the "text" (what is actually being said) is "sub" or under that which seems to be the subject under discussion.

Here's a snatch of subtext dialogue from the screenplay BASIC INSTINCT:

---------quote-------------

INT. THE HOUSE

It is beautifully done in a Santa Fe motif.  She goes to a
bedroom of the living room.

                         18.


Nick sits down on a couch facing the bedroom she's walked
into.  Gus sits across from him, his back to the bedroom.
There is a coffee table between them.  She leaves the
bedroom door halfway open.

An old newspaper is on the coffee table them.  Nick reaches
for it.  The headline says:  VICE COP CLEARED IN TOURIST
SHOOTINGS.  A headline underneath says:  GRAND JURY SAYS
SHOOTINGS ACCIDENTAL.  There is a photograph of Nick.

He stares at the paper.

        CATHERINE (O.S.)
    How long will this take?

Nick puts the paper down on the coffee table.  He is lost
in his thoughts.  Gus picks the paper up.

        NICK
        (looks up)
    I don't know.

Nick, facing the half open bedroom door, sees a mirror near
the wall of the bedroom.  The mirror reflects her in the
other corner of the bedroom.  She is taking her clothes
off.  He stares.  She strips down.  He sees her back. She
has a beautiful body.  Naked, she puts a dress on.  She
doesn't put any underwear on.

        NICK
        (continuing)
    Do you always keep old newspapers
    around?

        CATHERINE (O.S.)
    Only when they make interesting
    reading.

And she is suddenly out of the bedroom.  She stands there,
smiles.  They look at each other a long beat.

        CATHERINE
        (finally)
    I'm ready.

They get up, head out.

        GUS
    You have the right to an attorney.

        CATHERINE
    Why would I need an attorney?

INT. THE CAR - DAY

They sit in the front; she is in the back.  The car goes
over the winding, two-lane Mt. Tamalpais road.
                         19.


The fog is heavy.  It's starting to rain.  We see the beach
far below.

        CATHERINE
    Do you have a cigarette?

        NICK
    I don't smoke.

        CATHERINE
    Yes you do.

        NICK
    I quit.

She smiles, looks at him.  A beat, and he turns away.
Another beat, and she lights a cigarette up.

        NICK
        (continuing)
    I thought you were out of
    cigarettes.

        CATHERINE
    I found some in my purse; would you
    like one?

He turns back to her.

        NICK
    I told you -- I quit.

        CATHERINE
    It won't last.

A beat, as she looks at him, and then he turns away.

        GUS
    You workin' on another book?

        CATHERINE
    Yes I am.

        GUS
    It must really be somehtin' --
    makin' stuff up all the time.

He watches her in the rearview mirror.

        CATHERINE
    It teaches you to lie.

        GUS
    How's that?
                         20.


        CATHERINE
    You make it up, but it has to be
    believable.  They call it
    suspension of disbelief.

        GUS
    I like that.  "Suspension of
    Disbelief."

He smiles at her in the mirror.

        NICK
    What's your new book about?

        CATHERINE
    A detective.  He falls for the
    wrong woman.

He turns back to her.

        NICK
    What happens to him?

She looks right into his eye.

        CATHERINE
    She kills him.

A beat, as they look at each other, and then he turns away
from her.  Gus watcher her in the rearview mirror.

----------end quote--------------

You can get the whole screenplay (which showcases this technique throughout, as do almost every movie or TV Series episode today) at
http://sfy.ru/?script=basic_instinct

Notice how they're talking about smoking, and a book she's writing -- but that's not what they're talking ABOUT.  The subtext is all about Relationship -- about flirting -- about what they might be or become to each other. 

The REAL conversion is off-the-nose.

Now, back to the military Science Fiction novel with a bit of a love-story squeezed in between battle scenes, or frantic preparation for battle.

In this 11th book in the series about Kris Longknife, the issue that has kept Kris and her bodyguard apart during 10 novels is solved by a woman thought to be dead a long time ago, Kris's grandmother, also a ship's captain, thought lost in action.

Turns out, she led her battle squadron off in a chase across a galaxy, managed to escape her pursuers, just barely, and couldn't get home.  So she set up a colony on a world already occupied by some bird-like aliens with whom she hacked out a treaty of sorts. 

The issue Kris and her bodyguard have been dealing with is Navy Regulations against "fraternization" -- that is an anti-bullying regulation that is there to try to prevent a "superior" officer from trading good will and privileges for sexual favors from someone of lesser rank.

So those in the same chain of command who are (whatever) number of ranks apart aren't allowed to have a Relationship.

Kris's grandmother points out that because of shifts in titles and appointments, there were a few hours when Kris and her bodyguard were not in the same chain of command, and that the grandmother is empowered to conduct weddings.

They throw together a wedding ceremony using borrowed clothing, and well rehearsed wedding participants, and take off for a honeymoon at a coastal resort on the planet.

The romantic interlude is (appropriately) mostly nudity and sex, in very high contrast to the usual scenes in these 11 novels -- all very well written sex fantasy that keeps the characters in character.  But the dialogue lacks that "subtext" technique illustrated above.

Then the novel continues into another mission, more space-battle-tactics, arriving home to more frantic battle-preparations as great-big-bad-alien-killers approach, and a final battle where Kris dredges up some old Earth sea/air battle tactics.

Between long narrations of how they can stretch their resources to defend this solar system from the approaching aliens, Kris and her new husband have several scenes alone.

The issue of "fraternization regs" is raised, and Kris calls a conference of her staff leaders.  They rewrite the regs for the sake of morale, so there are a couple more sex interludes and a few times on the space station they build in orbit, they go out to a cafe for dinner. 

On page 316, near the end of the book, before the aliens arrive to try to take the planet, they go out to a restaurant on the space station (which now serves food that's mostly native to the planet).

Jack is the bodyguard/husband, Kris has 3 titles, one of which is Admiral.  Sal is Jack's A.I. computer and Nellie is Kris's A.I. computer.

---------quote---------

I'm having dinner with my husband. Right!

"Do you know what's special about today?" Jack said, reaching across the table for her hands.

"Besides the cavalry arriving to either rescue us or go down in our defeat?"

"Forget the job," Jack growled.  "Today is our second anniversary.  It's been two months since we let Granny Rita talk us into taking the plunge.  Do you regret it?"

"Never," Kris said, squeezing Jack's hand.  "Two months.  I totally forgot about it.  I can hardly keep track of the time.  How'd you do it?"

"I had Sal do it for me."

"Nelly, why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't know it mattered to you.  I know it's a very romantic thing for you humans.  I just didn't know if it would include you, Kris."

"Yes, I'm human, and yes, I'm romantic, at least for Jack, and Jack, why are you doing all the girl things and me doing all the stupid boy stuff?" 

"You're the admiral," he said with a shrug.

Kris let out a sigh.  "I don't like that, Jack."

"But you have to.  That's what Longknives do.  They do what they have to dol."

"Well, I want to do more.  Stuff I want to do as well as what I have to do." 

--------end quote---------

Dinner arrives, and they talk about the food and then ...

------quote---------
"You amaze me, Jack.  You remember our anniversary and do it enough ahead of time to talk my granny ut of the fruits of her garden."

"Oh, I didn't talk her out of anything, it was pure horse-trading.  My Marines will deliver a truckload of fish offal to her and all her neighbors' gardens.  Nobody gets anything free from your granny."

------end quote----------

Note how dialogue is substituted for narrative, and information is conveyed in TELL rather than SHOW.

Yes, it's fun banter, and yes I do love the styling -- and yes, after all these years of reading these novels, it's fabulous to "hear" them speak to each other so frankly -- but the dialogue is stilted, stiff, servicable, filling an interlude between lovingly detailed, subtly crafted battle scenes with some "words" that indicate they're still in love after all they've been through. 

Off-the-nose dialogue is show-not-tell -- it illustrates rather than states, allowing the reader to deduce what it means, and therefore the reader comes to participate in the story.

OK, so what CAN a writer do to finesse around these awkward moments, creating engrossing dialogue, quotable quotes, and

Why is there no way I can just rewrite that dialogue sequence, changing some words, restyling it, and bring it up to snuff for a modern Romance reader?

Here's why: the problem does not lie within this dialogue itself.  The writer is in a corner, there's a word-length limit, there has to be room for that final battle scene preceded by Kris sweating out what kind of battle plan might give her out-numbered force a chance.

The problem with this dialogue scene lies way back on page 66 to 86.

The problem here lies in the honeymoon scenes.

For this scene to be "off the nose" that honeymoon scene had to have additional "plants" inserted, images, symbols, and other devices that this scene could be fabricated from.

That inserted material had to be alluded to in other snatched moments -- perhaps gifting Kris with a certain flower on her access screen when she gets up in the morning, playing games with the calendar, etc. 

Since this is military science fiction, and this volume consists of more "logistics" problems than it does battle-tactics problems, the sexual innuendo and metaphore material has to be fabricated from shared combat experience (scenes missing here -- they don't work-out together, they don't fight each other, (they do shower together), they don't have a hand-to-hand-combat scene where the two of them are fighting an enemy.

There was opportunity for such together-scenes as their survey of the planet found other races of the natives who were not-so-friendly.  They could have found themselves in hand-to-hand-combat against unfriendly natives that they contrive to befriend.

This volume does have the more combative natives accepting positions in the space Navy to defend their planet, and Kris does consider promoting one of them to her personal staff.  So that story is there, in the background -- and was just passed over as a tell not show. 

The honeymoon scene could have been sliced in half to make room for a side-by-side or back-to-back combat scene which would provide the text to cover the sub-text in this 2-months-anniversary scene. 

There is the sub-genre of Action Romance, and this series of novels fits the description perfectly. 

The Longknife series is about combat, and Kris achieves results in combat that are ostensibly pure luck. 

There is a reason we have the term Sexual Politics and Battle of the Sexes.

This volume of the Kris Longknife series is about sexual politics.

But that issue is told not shown.

Kris's battle-commander results are LUCK.  Some characters resent her for that, others admire her, and the sensible ones stay as far away from her physical person as they can -- but they know which is the winning side in any conflict before it happens.

Watch this video of a veteran attributing combat results to luck:

VIDEO - IT'S ALL LUCK
http://youtu.be/iJsB2Xifq8c


Read Kris Longknife: DEFENDER, and watch for ways to restructure the early parts of the novel so that this crucial Romance Dinner Scene comes out with all the most powerful part of the content in subtext. 

Now find where you can use that same technique to restructure your work so that the dialogue stays "off-the-nose." 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Holiday Greetings

Happy Yuletide, whatever holiday(s) you celebrate! The twelve days of Christmas have just begun, since Christmastide in the Western tradition encompasses December 25 to January 6.

At this time of year, much grumbling comes from some quarters about the so-called “war on Christmas,” by which the viewers-with-alarm usually seem to mean the greeting of “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” and a lack of Nativity scenes in public places. Far more interesting than attacks on these straw targets is the historical “battle” discussed in one of my favorite nonfiction books, THE BATTLE FOR CHRISTMAS, by Stephen Nissenbaum. The REAL old-fashioned Christmas would have looked to us like a mash-up of Halloween, Mardi Gras, Thanksgiving, and New Year’s Eve. It’s not surprising the Puritans tried to ban it. The family-centered holiday we think of as “traditional” was invented in the nineteenth century. And as soon as Christmas began to turn into a celebration focused on children, people started worrying about its hazards of materialism and greed. Nissenbaum’s book explores the push and pull between groups who wanted to expand the season and those who wanted to restrict it and between the old “carnival” holiday and the domestic one we’re familiar with, as well as between the commercial and the family-centered.

More than fifty years ago, C. S. Lewis remarked that "Christmas" actually referred to three different things: A religious holiday, a secular festival, and "the commercial racket." Things haven't changed much!

This week I came across a thought-provoking passage in FOR ALL GOD’S WORTH, a book on worship by one of my favorite nonfiction authors, New Testament scholar N. T. Wright. He covers many topics whose immediate relevance to the topic of worship isn’t immediately obvious, including this statement about Christmas in his introduction: In reaction to the popular culture nostalgic holiday with its images of “candles and carols and firelight and happy children,” he says, “Christmas is not a reminder that the world is really quite a nice old place. It reminds us that the world is a shockingly bad old place, where wickedness flourishes unchecked. . . . Christmas is God lighting a candle, and you don’t light a candle in a room that’s already full of sunlight. You light a candle in a room that’s so murky that the candle, when lit, reveals just how bad things really are.” Imagine THAT on a greeting card. Wright continues, “Christmas, then, is not a dream, a moment of escapism. Christmas is the reality, which shows up the rest of ‘reality’.”

Best wishes to all—see you next year.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Story Springboards Part 6 - Earning a Sobriquet by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Story Springboards
Part 6
Earning a Sobriquet
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Here is a list of the previous parts in this Story Springboards series -- about how to build a "springboard."  In this section we've been examining the adage "just write an interesting story and it will sell."  "Interesting" is a very complex subject.  What interests you might not interest anyone else.  What interests you today might bore you tomorrow.

So what is the secret of being "interesting?" 

In Part 3 of this series,
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/story-springboards-part-3-art-of.html
we started sketching out the issues and topics relevant to constructing an Episodic Plot.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/story-springboards-part-4-art-of.html

We looked at the link between fame, glory and the "interesting story":
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/12/theme-character-integration-part-5-fame.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/12/story-springboards-part-5-explaining.html
Examines the popularity of Zombies and offers an explanation which might lead you to find the next most-popular subject.

In Reviews Part 3,
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/12/reviews-3-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html
we discussed the TV Series version of Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. -- and noted in the dialogue the use of the concept "Origin Story."

Origin Stories in superhero land are about how the "Hero" became "Super" -- how they got started on a career of crime-fighting or protecting the helpless or innocent.

An Origin Story is a certain type of "story springboard." 

In Romance, the "origin story" can be the "how we first met" story.  Or it can be the recent 'breakup' story of one member of the couple-to-be that sets up why the new Relationship just can't crystalize yet.

In Romance, "Pet Names" are sobriquets that personal and unique to the couple, often so confidential people use them as passwords. 

In Romance, the partner occupies the position of "Superhero" from the point of view of the lover -- the "He can do no wrong," position and "She is mine," position. 

Almost every Superhero has a nickname -- "Superman" is a nickname for Clark Kent which is formed as a sobriquet -- an alternative name that is derived from an observable trait.

Remember, there are many mystical ramifications of Names that we've discussed.  In Magic for Paranormal Romance you want to build into your World a definition of true-name and a mechanism that describes how finding out the true name and calling a person or thing by that true name actually works. 

True Names can be powerful - and so can sobriquets.  A sobriquet can mask a true name, or resonate with the person more strongly than the true name.

Many "ordinary people" acquire nicknames as sobriquets. 

In the Air Force and other military organizations (like the Space Patrol) the "nickname" often becomes a "call sign." 

In Battlestar Galactica "Starbuck" is a call sign and a nickname, a sobriquet.

Native American cultures had the custom of not naming a child until the personality and/or sponsoring animal-god (totem) was evident.  In many cases, that name had to be earned by a coming-of-age feat. 

What feat did your Main Character execute (maybe in college?) that earned a sobriquet?

Many cultures have various ways of creating layers of "names" for everyone.  There's the name you are given -- and the name you earn -- the name plastered upon you by your enemies -- the name awarded by History.

In fact, you find the power of Naming a person also in the Bible as God renames people variously: Abram became Abraham; Sarai became Sarah; Aaron became Aharon; Jacob became Israel (after wrestling with an Angel), and so on and on.

In online communities, people create an Avatar and name it.  This custom was also practiced in organized Science Fiction Fandom decades before the internet, and today you can register for the World Science Fiction Convention and give a fannish-name to be inscribed on your badge (so everyone will know who you really are -- as your "real" name would be meaningless.) 

Actors (and pole dancers in strip joints) use "stage names." 

Undercover Agents adopt and discard names, but think of themselves by one name.

Hackers make an art of adopting or awarding a sobriquet. 

Writers use "Pen Names" -- known in journalism as a by line. 

All these alternative names are to be considered when naming a character.  Each one you use for a character has to be carefully chosen -- it is an art!  You don't want "too many" names or the readers will get confused.  You might know many sobriquets your character has been known as over his lifetime, but use only one in this story. 

In a Romance, intimating a long-disused sobriquet to a lover is a form of revelation, a baring of Character. 

The sobriquets your Character has been awarded define both the character and the "circles" in which that character has moved. 

The sobriquet then becomes "interesting" because it hints at relevant information yet to be revealed, and at questions such as, "Well, then why aren't you currently moving in Hacker circles?"  "Why did you quit playing World of Warcraft?" 

So Avatar sobriquets are usually chosen by the person who is known by them, while appelations are chosen by those who love them, or hate them -- or just peripherally know them or have been impacted by their actions. 

Adding to or changing a person's NAME has potent magical significance, and that magic makes the Name a source of "springboard" energy for a storyteller.

That's why, very often, the correct first word of a novel -- or even of a pitch for a screenplay or novel -- consists of the character's full name.  Consider what you learn of a character whose full, proper name is six names followed by a list of titles. 

The Name of a character can be intriguing, interesting, portentous, suggestive.

Referring to our "ripped from the headlines" theme on this blog, I should point out that the conservative commentator Anne Coulter (who writes books, appears on several TV news comment shows, and has her own show) has earned the sobriquet, Firebrand.

Wound up tight within the sobriquet, you will find the Origin Story for your superhero.

Very often, a character will "appear" to a writer out of the blue, and the writer knows that character only by the sobriquet the character reveals.  Unraveling that nickname into the Origin Story could easily reveal the powerful springboard for an episodic work.

The sobriquet plastered upon a "Figure" by adversaries or enemies usually contains invective expressing how this Heroic Figure is anathema to the opposition.

The story of how a particular sobriquet was earned, and how that nickname differs from the person's given or family name, makes a terrific subject for a First Novel -- not necessarily the first in the story's own timeline, but the author's first sale to a major outlet.

So let's think a little bit about the earning of a nickname.

The concept "an earned name" speaks to the individuality of a person -- what makes you different from others.  Your given name may be in honor of an ancestor and your family name is inherited -- these are names that connect you to the Past, Present, and Future -- they are symbols of the time-binding function of humanity.

The earned name speaks entirely to what makes you different, singular, and identifies you with an achievement or style of achieving.

The sobriquet, therefore, is the element of CHARACTER that "springs forth" to create that character's story.

And since the sobriquet is earned by DOING something -- it therefore connects the story to the plot, (hus showing the reader the bud that will open to the many-petaled flower of the theme. 

The meaning of your story is the theme, and the sobriquet of your main or ancillary characters connects that meaning to the event sequence which forms the plot.

So "what he did to earn this sobriquet" is the SHOW that is not a TELL. 

Naming characters is a "show-don't-tell" exercise in explaining your theme. 

Your theme is what you have to say, which is what this story is about. 

Many people think they'd love to write novels, but they just don't know where to start.

One place to start is with the springboard -- and one filament in that board that is flexible enough to bend and then spring up to hurl the reader into the story is the Name of the Main Character.

Inside the theme, which is shown by the Main Character's appellations, lies the sound of your Voice.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/12/reviews-3-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

The story springboard propels your main character into his "story."  It is a "leap" (as in "leap of faith.") 

The character jumps off a cliff, dives into a situation.  Maybe the Main Character gets fed up and runs away from home, cuts all ties with his past and forges out into the world to create a new identity.  In other words, the beginning of the "Origin Story" for your character-sobriquet is where the character "leaps into action." 

And all of that is hidden within the Name and attendant sobriquets.

The sobriquet awarded to your Main Character by another character poses the question and hints at the answers.

And therein lies one of the best kept secrets of writing an "interesting" story.

"Interesting" is not you TELLING the reader the story.

"Interesting" is you hinting at stories within stories -- stories untold -- questions lurking in the background but not quite asked.

Reading a novel is an adventure.  The best part is not knowing what will happen next.

The novel reader wants to figure out what will happen next just before the Main Character twigs to the tricks being played.

Writing a novel is very much like a teacher using the Socratic Method to teach.  You don't TELL the answers.  You ASK the questions, and thus SHOW the matter to the students who feel entertained and thus interested.

What does "interesting" mean?

It means something you do not know.

What "interests" people?

Their own ideas, thoughts, and imagination -- theirs, not yours. 

Review the tweets cited in this post:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/12/theme-character-integration-part-5-fame.html

What's in a Name?

Inside a Name you will find an organizing principle for the meaning of an Origin Story.

More examples and exercises on creating story-springboards via Theme-Worldbuilding Integration on January 14, 2014 on this blog.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Resurrecting Dead Characters

This week on the mid-season “finale” of a TV show I watch, one of my favorite characters died. I won’t reveal the title or character, in case you follow the series and haven’t seen the episode yet. I’m hoping he’ll return somehow. After all, Buffy’s vampire lovers Angel and Spike didn’t stay dead. On SUPERNATURAL, both Dean and Sam have been to Hell and back. THE VAMPIRE DIARIES restored Bonnie from ghost to living girl. Revival of “dead” characters has become almost commonplace on fantasy programs. Given the tremendous magical powers demonstrated by one of the characters in this series that just started its winter hiatus, bringing someone back from the dead doesn’t seem farfetched. Whether doing so would cheapen his sacrifice, of course, is a separate question.

Simply working a spell to resurrect him seems too simple, in my opinion. I’ve been speculating on whether time travel might be used to return him to life, the way Darla was brought back on ANGEL. Could magic pluck him out of the time stream at the instant of death and bring him forward into a future moment weeks or months later? The extraction would have to occur at the very microsecond before he dies, or else the deed he died to perform wouldn’t get completed, plus witnesses would see him vanish rather than assume they saw his death (in an explosion of black smoke, which is why it’s barely possible to remove him from the present without having anyone realize it).

Robert Heinlein, in one of his later novels, rescues Lazarus Long’s mother from death in somewhat this way. History records that she was killed in a traffic accident. Lazarus's companions leap in from the distant future to whisk her away while a trace of life remains in her body. They pull it off without apparently changing the past, by instantaneously substituting a cloned replica of her to serve as the corpse. (It’s a mindless body that has never really “lived,” so they aren’t committing murder.) A somewhat similar premise allows the time traveling historians in Connie Willis’s series (DOOMSDAY BOOK, TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG, BLACKOUT, and ALL CLEAR) to rescue doomed artifacts or living creatures in rare circumstances without changing the known past. An object recorded as destroyed in the bombing of a cathedral in the Blitz is snatched away just before the bombs fall, so that it’s preserved while witnesses in the past assume it was blown up. A cat thrown into a river to drown is taken into the future; since the cat was already removed from the timeline by its intended death, transporting it alive into the mid-twenty-first century doesn’t change the past.

Authors treat the problem of changing the past in many different ways. One of my favorite time travel novels, LIGHTNING by Dean Koontz, features a traveler from the past (Nazi Germany) to our present. From his viewpoint, he’s trying to change the future. He labors under the limitation that he can’t be in two places at the same time, so he can’t leap into a moment when he already exists. This restriction makes the story’s climax, when he’s trying to save the heroine while barred from any segment of time he has already visited, highly suspenseful.

So, anyway – what about restoring a deceased major character? Does bringing such a character back to life, whether by magical resurrection, tricks with time, or some other method, retroactively negate the emotional impact of his or her death? I’ve sometimes felt that’s a risk writers take on a series such as BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER or SUPERNATURAL, where the revival (in one form or another) of deceased characters becomes almost routine, so that any death of a major character loses importance. “Don’t worry, he’ll be back,” the viewer starts to think. Or, in the case of a person who’s worn out his welcome with the audience, “I hope we won’t see him again.” The series that concluded its half-season this week hasn’t reached that point; we haven’t yet seen a definitely dead person restored in this fictional universe.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Story Springboards Part 5: Explaining Popularity of Zombies by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Story Springboards Part 5: Explaining Popularity of Zombies  

by 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

In this series, we've been discussing the mechanism of how to "just write an interesting story" -- so let's ask What's So Interesting About Zombies?

Here are the Parts of Story Springboards and related posts:

The index of previous posts relevant to this discussion:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/index-post-to-art-and-craft-of-story.html

In Part 3 of this series,
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/story-springboards-part-3-art-of.html
we started sketching out the issues and topics relevant to constructing an Episodic Plot.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/story-springboards-part-4-art-of.html

And last week we looked at the link between fame, glory and the "interesting story":
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/12/theme-character-integration-part-5-fame.html

Then, on TV News, I heard a guy trying earnestly to explain that the popularity of Zombies on TV is due to the way Zombies represent Socialism. 

He might be right.  I couldn't tell because he really was inarticulate and all over the place philosophically.  All he did was express his personal opinion that TV is garbage and we should change the world by changing TV first.

TV's business model is to sell eyeballs to advertisers -- the fiction is just the "glue" to keep the eyeballs through commercials.  Those delivering TV fiction are trying to make a profit from this business model, therefore they must choose fiction that people want to watch.  They are not in the business of creating the desire, but of fulfilling that desire.

Like editors at big publishing houses, TV moguls buy TV series from Producers (and/or production companies or studios -- who are just contractors who build to suit their customers) all use the very latest in polling and public-opinion surveying (focus groups) to identify trends in what already interests the most people. 

The equation they have to work is all about how much it costs to make and deliver this piece of fiction vs. how much they can sell it for.

So the experiment of trying to run this delivery system mechanism BACKWARDS, is about the same as trying to use statistics backwards (e.g. If 51% of Black Hispanics prefer to wear white underwear, and you prefer white underwear, therefore you are a Black Hispanic.) 

So, I've seen this attempt to use mass media to change public opinion done before, and I have never seen that experiment work without losing tons of money.  It can work with specialty media -- aiming really cheap-to-make items at a tiny, already thirsty audience.  But it can't make a profit with expensive media delivery that needs a vast audience to break even. 

It surely wouldn't work with me.  What entertains me, is what entertains ME!  And nobody can change me by forcing me to fall asleep bored in front of something I  don't find entertaining.

But I do find the zombie popularity intriguing, interesting, even entertaining. 

I am perhaps able to analyze Zombie popularity because though it's fascinating to me, Zombies as a topic don't "grab" me the way Vampires do.  It's probably the Romance angle.

Yes, I've read some Zombie Romance novels - even great writing doesn't make Zombies interesting to me, though the craft techniques used to tell such a story are absolutely riveting!

I love the Vampire genres because they toy with the problem of Immortality -- watching everyone you love die, and going on and on and on. 

There's the "never-learning-or-changing" spiritual position of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's St. Germain, portrait of Noblesse Oblige through the millennia (I love it!).  And there are Romance Vampire types who either learn and grow -- or don't.  And there are Vampires who fight being immortal.  There are even Vampire series that don't address immortality.

The Immortality Problem is what fascinates me about Vampires -- everything else is just a complication.  Humans are not designed to be immortal.

Presenting a person (a Character) with a problem they are not designed to handle is SCIENCE FICTION.  So I like the Vampire series that center on a Vampire who refuses to Kill, and solves his problem with science, say inventing artificial blood, or creating a dimensional doorway and "hunting" in another space-time. 

Zombies also present humans with problems that humans are not designed to handle -- either from the perspective of being a Zombie, or from the perspective of fighting off a rising tide from a cemetary.

A few months ago, I saw a quick item on TV News about the on-time performance of various air ports -- where they noted the SOLUTION to handling the increasing volume of flights was to dig up a cemetery and build a runway over that cemetery.  I think that was Chicago's O'Hare, but it doesn't matter. 

My point is that the city involved could not create a solution that did not violate the code of conduct of part of that city's population -- no "work-around" such as the Vampire's inventing artificial blood or stealing from a blood bank was adopted.  Cost/profit equations rule, just as in Television or Publishing. 

As I've mentioned before on this blog, I think our problem solving mental muscles are deteriorating for lack of training.  The beginning of that training is supposed to be in High School where you learn geometry proofs.  But it has to go on into the twenties. 

PROBLEMS are inherently interesting.

Though different people at different times in life find different problems intriguing, it is the nature of "interesting" to be focused around a problem.

Remember the two plots we've discussed at length that summarize all fiction:

"Johnny gets his fanny caught in a beartrap (problem), and has his adventures getting it out."

"A likeable Hero (Save The Cat!) struggles against seemingly overwhelming odds (problems) toward a worthwhile goal."

Those two story-patterns pivot on the central concept of "interesting" being the PROBLEM as presented to a Character who proceeds to solve that problem (or not).  In a long-novel or series, the "problem" first presented causes a failure, which causes the problem to be redefined, solved, only to uncover another problem. 

See the TV Series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode 2 where the problem is an "element" responsible for gravity is mined and used as a weapon.  The solution (as in Horror genre) is to lock it away in an unlabeled vault.  The material locked away had swallowed the scientist who invented the weaponization of it -- the final scene shows the amorphous element extruding a grasping, reaching hand-shape.  They could have left that scene out if they wanted to indicate there was nothing more to be said or done regarding that problem.  But this is a serial in the Buck Rogers tradition of movie-theater serials transformed into Comics.   

Look at the two Plot formulas again.  "The Problem" is part of the structure of CONFLICT, which is the essence of Story (and Plot).  Conflict-anticipated is one of the spring-elements in the "story springboard." 

Anticipation -- knowing what might come and wondering if it will come -- is a core ingredient in "interesting." 

A story-springboard is not about what is there -- but about what might become there.  It's about anticipating what comes next. 

So let's delve more deeply into the popularity of Zombies to see if we can find in that a clue to what comes next.

We've been discussing "interesting" as in the advice in all books about writing that say "All you have to do to sell fiction is write an interesting story."

Keep in mind the question of whether fiction on TV can create "interest" in a topic in a target audience (manipulate masses of people), or whether the "interest" in that topic has to be there first.  Where do we get our mass-interests from?  Where do trends come from?  Can they be created?  Or can they only be magnified like a cowboy creating a stampede of cattle by panicing a few.  

The advice to "just write an interesting story" is very possibly the most frustrating advice -- worse than "Show Don't Tell" -- yet it is so very true, and very possibly as easy to do as creating a cattle stampede! 

Pondering the success of Zombies on TV, in film, books, games -- it occurred to me that there is an explanation for the popularity  of Vampires and Zombies that could allow new writers to predict the NEXT popular trend in fiction, the next thing found "interesting" by huge numbers of people hungry for more-more-more.

In the 1940's -- with the advent of the Atomic Bomb and that horrific potential -- and the UFO sightings of the 1950's, spurring the drive toward orbital space flight in the 1960's -- people were AFRAID OF THE FUTURE. 

Remember the image of the cattle stampede.  That's fear-driven.

At that time as people were becoming spooked over science being destructive or invasive (via hostile aliens), the TELEPHONE was a novelty that didn't appear in every home -- and where a home had a telephone, there was only one instrument centrally placed that seldom rang!  (see the British TV Series Downton Abbey in the two early seasons.)

Science Fiction grew and prospered, broke out of the tiny side-venue it had occupied in the 1920's and 1930's and blossomed into the STAR TREK era in the late 1960's.

That brand of Science Fiction was focused on the future.

People were afraid of the future - the term "techphobe" was coined only later as computers invaded the home, but the prior generation had been displaced from their professions by "automation" (a wave of the future that destroyed lives.) and the telephone was the "tech" that was resisted even as it was accepted.  In the 1950's, teens were allowed to use the phone only for "real" business, and then only a couple minutes per call.  By the 1960's, the TV image of the teenager was a kid sprawled across their bed on the phone for hours -- and parents complained but did nothing to rein in excessive phone-time. 

Alvin Toffler's FUTURE SHOCK explained the over-view of these attitudes toward the future, the speed of change and where it might lead (much of that book's predictions are coming true right this minute, and still coming.)  Toffler predicted the computer and the internet would create telecommuting, cottage industry, and self-employment. 

In the 1950's, Science Fiction was predicting The Welfare State because only half the people alive in the world would have an I.Q. high enough to work the jobs created by technology -- but those jobs would be productive enough that the lower I.Q. people would not have to work at all. 

Readers of 1950's Science Fiction (mostly teens then) could see that trend gathering steam, but didn't want that to happen and regarded it as ridiculous fantasy.  Their fear was not being able to get a job or hold it.  Their parents nearly starved in the Depression, and talked about that and the War constantly, warning teens they had to earn a good living or die starving in the street (which people did.)  They needed jobs that wouldn't be automated out of existence. 

Well, the current generation of teens has never known a world that was not automated, and that kept people from instant communications (even pictures in color).  The current teens all know someone on Welfare or Food Stamps, and it's no stigma at all, nothing to be afraid of if you can't get or hold a job.  You can still have internet access -- after all, it's a right, no?  If you can't afford an iPad, get an Android -- they're better anyway!

What scares the current teens? 

THE PAST IS SCARIER THAN THE FUTURE!

The current teens are scared by the idea that their parent's generation's values (get a high-skilled job and hold it) will come back to haunt and overwhelm their every effort to live an easy life. 

Grandparents are dying off so aren't a source of presents -- or they're retiring to become a burden on "the system" -- Social Security and Medicare are fingered as the source of demands for enormous tax on salary checks.  Teens with their first unskilled labor jobs feel this the most and are convinced we have to raise the minimum wage because those deductions from wages leave nothing to live on. 

The idea that low I.Q. people are unemployable in a tech-based world, and their labor is not only not-needed but not-wanted is unthinkable. 

The idea that having a low I.Q. (that of, say a Zombie?) condemns you to having no internet, no cell phone, no Nikes, no Pizza delivered during The Big Game -- that wouldn't be Justice, and therefore can't happen.  The idea that low I.Q. makes you worthless has been shoved off-stage, into the subconscious where Horror Genre seethes and regenerates. 

Today's teens are not capable of replacing the elder generation workers now retiring (most employers will bemoan this given a chance) -- because today's teens did not master the older, basic skill sets which are still required in the workplace. 

But at the same time, the skill sets of the elders do not seem potentially useful in the future the younger people envision. 

The past rising from the grave Zombie fashion is a subconscious, unconscious, nebulous (NEPTUNE) terror that can't be articulated or faced.

The present is trying to dig that grave to bury the pre-internet way of organizing society.

We are in the throws of a revolution in which Capitalism, the Republic of the USA, the independent person who works for himself (farmer feeding one family out in the middle of nowhere and barely having produce to sell to buy what he can't produce), has become the dependent getting food stamps etc. -- and those who get government subsidies really have no idea where that money comes from, or why it buys less and less at the store. 

But if Toffler was right, our future is one of self-employment. 

Remember I.Q. is a measure artificially invented to prove a socio-political point -- making the point incontrovertible because it was proved by "scientific" experiment.

What if I.Q. is irrelevant, or even non-existent, a mere figment of the imagination?

That would be a good theme for a science fiction series.  If there is no such thing as I.Q., then how do we sort people? 

Do we have to sort people? (Harry Potter's Sorting Hat???)  Do we have to group people into herds and stampede them (like Zombie mobs?) in the direction one or a few people choose (such as people who decry what's on TV and want to change things by changing TV entertainment?) 

Way back before the Industrial Revolution, there was no such thing as "a job" -- there were peasants who worked the King's land, there were self-employed craftsmen who made things (saddles, wagon wheels), and there were Aristocrats who owned things and people. 

Women bred and died young, and men had to master a CRAFT young to raise a family. 

People worked, but there were no jobs and no "bennies."

The Industrial Revolution (1700's and 1800's) changed that, giving us an entire worldwide population whose highest ambition is to "get a good job with good bennies."

We then shifted to relying on "the government" to 'create jobs' just as the government 'creates money.' 

Once Upon A Time we were all self-employed and without pensions.  When you couldn't work, your children supported you or you just died. 

Then we were mostly all employed, and demanded more and more vacation and pensions.

Now we are shifting back to being all-self-employed where we will work-or-die without bennies.  Will "aristocrats" own us all?

THAT TRANSITION IS SCARY not because it's "the future" but because it's "the past."

We are being sucked back into the insecure, benefit-less existence of humanity's far past -- long since buried.  Now it is RISING AGAIN, a Zombie from the grave.

That sense of "something" horrible rising from "the grave" (like the HAND extruded from the gravity material locked in a vault in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.)  could be symbolized by Vampires and Zombies, and other "things" that can't be killed, that come back to life again and again. 

Note that the pre-industrial society respected and revered The Aged.  The elderly were supported by their children or just died when they couldn't work any more, and children did consider it a point of personal pride and even joy to support their elders. 

Today every TV show seems to showcase a rift between parents and children that could be called hatred.  Much eye-rolling accompanies the interruption by a phone call from a parent.  Stressful difficulty and personal rejection are the keynotes between elder and adult child. 

That unreasonable burden that parents and grandparents have become has not only accompanied the discarding of supporting your own elders in age (they become the government's responsibility), but has discarded the idea that the Elder Knows Better If Not Best -- Elder Wisdom is now Elder Stupidity (like a Zombie). 

Communicating with an Elder on TV is very much like trying to reason with a hoard of Zombies trying to eat your brains.  Hopeless.  Run For Your Life! 

You see it in almost every TV show now -- people get killed before your eyes, declared dead, buried, mourned, and RISE AGAIN to return to the show as a Character.

See Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. where one of the characters died in The Avengers and is now resurrected (cogent and heroic, easy to communicate with - but resurrected.)  It's a theme.  That which dies rises before you again.  No deadline is real. 

If Reincarnation is real -- we all may have some subliminal memories of the horrors of self-employment without pension benefits.  We may be subliminally "feeling" the rise of that Zombie we thought buried and rotted -- old age without pension.

You can see this in the drumbeat of "safety" everywhere. 

You can't do this because it's not safe.  You can't send soldiers to fight because it's not safe.  You can't send your kids to school without armed guards because it's not safe (tell that to the kid who rode a mule 5 miles to school in a blizzard!).  You can't carry a gun because it's not safe.  Now cars that drive themselves are coming - because driving is not safe. 

We are obsessed with safety (while being interested in Horror on TV)  -- perhaps because we seek security.

Perhaps we seek security because we remember the deaths we died over and over in poverty and pain, old and decrepit at age 45.  Lifetime after lifetime, we have clawed our way out of that horror, and now we're being sucked back into it.

The "show don't tell" for that vision, that subliminal feeling, is "Zombies."

The fascination with Zombies is bottomless, endless, a true "deer in the headlights" watching death approach and unable to move.

So, OK, then what will the NEXT TREND be?

Well, if Toffler was correct, half of us will be in "cottage industry" and "telecommuting" while the half of humanity that's incapable of mastering the mental agility necessary to do modern work will be supported by those who can work.  Those who work will be self-employed -- AND SECURE. 

With very small invested effort, we will be able to produce all humanity needs in food,  clothing, shelter, entertainment, and healthcare.  So everyone will feel secure.

What will entertain that population that feels no threat from any direction? 

What will fuel a thrust into space exploration?  What will pay for scientific advances to conquer space?  Why would anyone do that?

If we don't fear the past and we don't fear the future -- what will we fear?

Or Love?

Or Desire? 

Love, Desire, Curiosity -- maybe Fear, too --  are the story springboards that will work after the Zombies die off. 

Remember, now we are not only discovering planets around other stars, but also spotting asteroids that can wipe Earth out -- on inevitable collision course.  So once again, maybe it's Outer Space that will be feared more than the deeply buried Past.

Do you think this "karmic memory" concept is what is fueling the Zombie popularity?  Is that what's interesting about Zombies? 

If it's fear that's interesting now -- then is love next?  Love in Outer Space?  Love from Outer Space? 

There is a famous story about how Science and Fact swamp out morality in decision making -- titled The Cold Equations.  It was about low-orbit space travel.

Do you think the next famous story that creates a trend will be titled The Warm Equations - about how Emotion is the only valid basis for decision making?

Remember, above, we noted how there seems to be a dearth of decision-making-training in our schools. 

Do you suppose the primacy of Emotion in decision making will become the next scientific breakthrough?

Or maybe it'll be "superstition rules" -- as the airport runway over a cemetery racks up statistical anomalies in crashes?  The Bermuda Triangle of Airports?

What will be afraid of next? 

Or will the predictions in this article come true, and we'll live longer because of increasing health -- and not be old, debilitated and dependent on grandchildren to take care of us?
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/10/in_time_why_is_science_fiction_about_longer_lifespans_so_dystopian.html


Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Open Letter From Authors' Guild (Richard Russo)

Authors are joining The Authors' Guild in record numbers. Here's why:

An Open Letter to My Fellow Authors

It’s all changing, right before our eyes. Not just publishing, but the writing life itself, our ability to make a living from authorship. Even in the best of times, which these are not, most writers have to supplement their writing incomes by teaching, or throwing up sheet-rock, or cage fighting. It wasn’t always so, but for the last two decades I’ve lived the life most writers dream of: I write novels and stories, as well as the occasional screenplay, and every now and then I hit the road for a week or two and give talks. In short, I’m one of the blessed, and not just in terms of my occupation. My health is good, my children grown, their educations paid for. I’m sixty-four, which sucks, but it also means that nothing that happens in publishing—for good or ill—is going to affect me nearly as much as it affects younger writers, especially those who haven’t made their names yet. Even if the e-price of my next novel is $1.99, I won’t have to go back to cage fighting.

 

Still, if it turns out that I’ve enjoyed the best the writing life has to offer, that those who follow, even the most brilliant, will have to settle for less, that won’t make me happy and I suspect it won’t cheer other writers who’ve been as fortunate as I. It’s these writers, in particular, that I’m addressing here. Not everyone believes, as I do, that the writing life is endangered by the downward pressure of e-book pricing, by the relentless, ongoing erosion of copyright protection, by the scorched-earth capitalism of companies like Google and Amazon, by spineless publishers who won’t stand up to them, by the “information wants to be free” crowd who believe that art should be cheap or free and treated as a commodity, by internet search engines who are all too happy to direct people to on-line sites that sell pirated (read “stolen”) books, and even by militant librarians who see no reason why they shouldn’t be able to “lend” our e-books without restriction. But those of us who are alarmed by these trends have a duty, I think, to defend and protect the writing life that’s been good to us, not just on behalf of younger writers who will not have our advantages if we don’t, but also on behalf of readers, whose imaginative lives will be diminished if authorship becomes untenable as a profession.

I know, I know. Some insist that there’s never been a better time to be an author. Self-publishing has democratized the process, they argue, and authors can now earn royalties of up to seventy percent, where once we had to settle for what traditional publishers told us was our share. Anecdotal evidence is marshaled in support of this view (statistical evidence to follow). Those of us who are alarmed, we’re told, are, well, alarmists. Time will tell who’s right, but surely it can’t be a good idea for writers to stand on the sidelines while our collective fate is decided by others. Especially when we consider who those others are. Entities like Google and Apple and Amazon are rich and powerful enough to influence governments, and every day they demonstrate their willingness to wield that enormous power. Books and authors are a tiny but not insignificant part of the larger battle being waged between these companies, a battleground that includes the movie, music, and newspaper industries. I think it’s fair to say that to a greater or lesser degree, those other industries have all gotten their asses kicked, just as we’re getting ours kicked now. And not just in the courts. Somehow, we’re even losing the war for hearts and minds. When we defend copyright, we’re seen as greedy. When we justly sue, we’re seen as litigious. When we attempt to defend the physical book and stores that sell them, we’re seen as Luddites. Our altruism, when we’re able to summon it, is too often seen as self-serving.

But here’s the thing. What the Apples and Googles and Amazons and Netflixes of the world all have in common (in addition to their quest for world domination), is that they’re all starved for content, and for that they need us. Which means we have a say in all this. Everything in the digital age may feel new and may seem to operate under new rules, but the conversation about the relationship between art and commerce is age-old, and artists must be part of it. To that end we’d do well to speak with one voice, though it’s here we demonstrate our greatest weakness. Writers are notoriously independent cusses, hard to wrangle. We spend our mostly solitary days filling up blank pieces of paper with words. We must like it that way, or we wouldn’t do it. But while it’s pretty to think that our odd way of life will endure, there’s no guarantee. The writing life is ours to defend. Protecting it also happens to be the mission of the Authors Guild, which I myself did not join until last year, when the light switch in my cave finally got tripped. Are you a member? If not, please consider becoming one. We’re badly outgunned and in need of reinforcements. If the writing life has done well by you, as it has by me, here’s your chance to return the favor. Do it now, because there’s such a thing as being too late.

Richard Russo
December 2013

 

Click for the Guild application form.

 

Click for the PDF version of this letter.

If you are eligible to join, and decide to do so, you can--if you wish-- give credit on your application form to the author who convinced you to join. 

As an Authors' Guild member, you can buy health coverage. I have their dental coverage through TEIGIT (The Entertainment Industry Group Insurance Trust) which is a Cigna policy. It's great. It even offers orthodontistry coverage.

Best wishes,

Rowena Cherry

Holiday TV Viewing

It’s the season for holiday movies and TV specials. Do you have favorites you watch over and over? Some people’s holiday faves don’t even necessarily have any direct connection to Christmas or winter. In the era before home video, the annual December broadcast of THE WIZARD OF OZ was a big holiday event for many families, because that was the only time we could see it. IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, of course, is another seasonal staple, even though Christmas comes into the story only at the end. As a child, I loved watching Perry Como’s Christmas shows with my parents, with Como and his guests singing the old standards. Nowadays musical Christmas specials just don’t seem to be what they used to be, so I hardly ever bother with them except to play my home VCR recording of Peter, Paul, and Mary’s holiday concert. My husband frequently re-watches Celtic Woman’s Christmas DVD, a shining exception to the “not what they used to be” remark.

We have friends who make a yearly Christmas tradition of watching THE BISHOP’S WIFE, the vintage film with Cary Grant as an angel sent to help a bishop (David Niven) who’s stressed by the project of building a new cathedral. My personal non-obvious Christmas movie is LADY AND THE TRAMP, my favorite of Disney’s “old” animation cycle. (My favorite of the more recent features is BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.) This film begins and ends on a pair of Christmas days two years apart. I watch it every December despite having most of the dialogue memorized. Never having lived with a dog for my first nine years, I got my ideas about dogs from LADY AND THE TRAMP and LASSIE. When my parents bought a boxer, I was severely disappointed that he didn’t act nearly so intelligent as Lady or Lassie. Plus, he was hyper-manic and drooled constantly.

When our sons were little, naturally we viewed the standard TV specials every year—the Peanuts Christmas special, RUDOLF THE RED-NOSED REINDEER, FROSTY THE SNOWMAN, the animated HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS (voiced by Boris Karloff), etc. Since the kids have grown up and I know most of those cartoons practically by heart, I seldom watch them when they’re broadcast anymore. For my main Christmas viewing focus, I re-watch one or more of the many version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL I’ve collected. It’s fun to observe how various filmmakers have adapted the tale of Ebenezer Scrooge. The Mr. Magoo animated adaptation is surprisingly good, with some lovely songs. Among the live movies, my favorite Scrooge used to be George C. Scott. He has been superseded by Patrick Stewart. I enjoy the way Scrooge displays a certain dry wit even before his conversion, and Stewart captures that trait well. Scott’s Scrooge is humorous in a different way, conveying a somewhat sarcastic tone, e.g. in the speech about garments versus coal for warmth, which isn’t in Dickens’s book. The Muppet CHRISTMAS CAROL is fun just because it has Muppets. Among looser adaptations, I especially admire the Henry Winkler AMERICAN CHRISTMAS CAROL, set during the Depression. While Winkler’s Scrooge-like character gets visited by the usual ghosts, the story’s details are different as befits the altered setting and time period. I also like the sex-switched A DIVA’S CHRISTMAS CAROL, though I wouldn’t claim it has the artistic quality of the Winkler film. The diva, a black superstar singer in a modern setting, faces the truth about her life in an updated fashion, such as viewing the Christmas Yet to Come message as a TV documentary about her career and death. This story does require a stringent suspension of disbelief, though, in that we have to accept its taking place in a world where nobody has heard of Dickens; the diva is named Ebony Scrooge and has an assistant named Bob Cratchit with a chronically ill son named Tim.

What are your family or personal holiday viewing staples?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt