Theme-Symbolism Integration Part 3 Why Do We Cry At Weddings Part 2 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Symbolism Integration
Part 3
Why Do We Cry At Weddings Part 2
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Symbolism
Bride&Groom Pray Before Ceremony
Without Seeing Each Other

Previous Parts of Theme-Symbolism Integration
PART 1
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/12/theme-symbolism-integration-part-1-you.html

PART 2
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/08/theme-symbolism-integration-part-2-why.html

And this is Part 3 of Theme-Symbolism Integration - as well as Part 2 of Why We Cry At Weddings.

It is said that laughter is a response to pain, the edge of the zone of pain, the prospect of pain -- a tickle is a sensation that can escalate into pain, but doesn't, yet it sets the nerves on fire and we laugh, giggle, flinch away just as if it were pain.

Emotional pain works the same way -- the tickle of the edge of a painful emotion sizzles through the nerves and jerks out a bark of laughter. 

Like a sneeze, laughter is a reflex: the nerves fire, the muscles respond, on a sliding scale of intensity.

Last week, we discussed Vulnerability -- how a writer does not need to understand precisely where their reader is vulnerable to evoke emotion in the reader, but a writer needs to understand the condition of vulnerability. 

A tickle on a vulnerable spot can be experienced as pain. 

"Salt in an open wound" is an example of that.  Ordinarily, our skin doesn't respond much to salt -- though enough salt on the skin for long enough dehydrates and puckers the skin.  Scrape the skin a little, then trickle salty sweat over the raw spot and OUCH!

The most vulnerable spot people today have in common is, I think, the knotted ball of symbolism that grows out of Religion (all of them; not any particular one). 

Bride Praying Before Ceremony

Religious people are viewed as stupid, or at least uneducated, and who wants to be viewed that way?  So we have a lot of people who seriously believe in God, but disavow all Religion because Religious people are stupid.  Some of these have convinced themselves that they don't believe in God, even though they do.  Some accept the idea of Souls and Soul Mates, but not God. 

We seem to be in an epoch of human history where our penetration of understanding of Nature, of Stars, and Planets, Galaxies and Particles, Dark Matter, Strings, and even Life On Other Planets, is finally becoming common knowledge.

In general, even just a High School education exposes people to the miracles of genetics, neurology, disease treatments and even cures based on our understanding of nerve cells, and the brain as a whole.

Even Sanity is coming under scientific scrutiny.  Out of body experiences can be explained by brain activity.  Many severe psychological conditions can be treated by daily medication, and more miracles are in the works.

We can solve anything.  We are just animals with a little more brain matter than most. 

In many ways that is a very comforting thought, and it leads to clear positions on various difficult matters such as Abortion, Death Penalty Crimes, the morality of War, and how to perform Charitable Deeds (or not).  The list of today's dilemmas seems endless, and most of them are easily resolved once you understand the world in terms of the human brain's electrochemical base.

You don't need God to get married, or have children -- in whichever order you choose.

Even people who go to Church a few dozen times a year to salute the Unknowable Infinite still live their everyday life in a totally explicable Knowable world.

We rely on that scientific view of reality, base all our decisions and actions on it, and feel confident that we know what we're doing as responsible adults. 

Saturn rules Science.

Neptune rules Romance.

Saturn rules bones.

Neptune rules the Soul.

Bones exist - we know that.  Souls do not exist -- we're pretty sure of that.


Yet we search for, and often find and marry, our Soul Mate.

When we fall in love, we FEEL a new sensation on a vulnerable part of the psyche -- it is a loss of virginity, a new sensation, a new set of nerves connecting and sizzling with a message.

Pain and Pleasure are the same thing -- nerves stimulated in a pattern.  One we flinch away from and try to avoid; the other we pursue and try to repeat. 

Where we are vulnerable and tender, very faint stimuli register as intense.  Where we are calloused from repeated stimulation, even the most intense stimuli are barely noticeable.

As physical creatures, we seek stimulation as validation of our existence, of life itself.  Experiencing a response to stimulus is essential to our well-being.

The louder the music (however pleasurable), the faster it deafens (callouses) you. 

Sex works like that.  The more frequent and unrestrained the sex, the more intensity you need in order to feel it. 

Taste works like that.  The spicier the food you regularly eat, the more spice you need to taste anything at all. 

Smell works like that.  If there's a bad smell in your house, you get used to it and your best friend won't tell you how your clothes stink.  You wouldn't believe it, anyway.

What you are used to becomes imperceptible -- yet we seek perception. 

The term is "Jaded Palate" -- if you have a jaded palate, even good things don't seem noticeable.

So how do we, as writers, sneak around to the back door of our readers' Soul and tickle them? 

The main tool we use to get through our reader's thick callouses and pierce their Souls with emotions they can not name is Symbolism.

But randomly chosen symbols will not add up to a story.

Working against each other, randomly chosen symbols produce an undifferentiated fog of gray.

Choosing symbols specifically to explicate a particular Theme produces sharp contrasts, black and white, yellow and red, green and orange.  Emotions work just like colors. 

Armenian Couple Crowned & Blessed

There are Seven Colors in the Rainbow -- and Seven Primary Emotions.

The writer's creative medium is not words, not computer word processing, and not even imagery or poetry -- the writer's creative medium is Emotion.

Naturally, there's a lot of argument over classifying human emotion! 

In early 2014, The Atlantic published this article headlined:
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/02/new-research-says-there-are-only-four-emotions/283560/

-----------quote-------
New Research Says There Are Only Four Emotions

Conventional scientific understanding is that there are six, but new research suggests there may only be happy, sad, afraid/surprised, and angry/disgusted.

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

This theory is in contravention to the accepted model of 6 Primary Emotions: happy, surprised, afraid, disgusted, angry, and sad. 

There is a more classic list of 7 Basic Emotions -- Anger, Contempt, Fear, Disgust, Happiness, Sadness and Surprise.

In 2012, Discover Magazine carried a story about defining humanity's 7 primal emotions by studying rats and making them laugh.

http://discovermagazine.com/2012/may/11-jaak-panksepp-rat-tickler-found-humans-7-primal-emotions

---------quote from Discover article------------
Since the 1960s, first at Bowling Green State University and later at Washington State University, Panksepp has charted seven networks of emotion in the brain: SEEKING, RAGE, FEAR, LUST, CARE, PANIC/GRIEF, and PLAY. He spells them in all caps because they are so fundamental, he says, that they have similar functions across species, from people to cats to, yes, rats.

Panksepp’s work has led him to conclude that basic emotion emerges not from the cerebral cortex, associated with complex thought in humans, but from deep, ancient brain structures, including the amygdala and the hypothalamus. Those findings may show how talk therapy can filter down from the cortex to alter the recesses of the mind. But Panksepp says his real goal is pushing cures up from below. His first therapeutic effort will use deep brain stimulation in the ancient neural networks he has charted to counteract depression. Panksepp recently sat down with DISCOVER executive editor ?Pamela Weintraub at the magazine’s offices in New York City to explain his iconoclastic take on emotion. His new book, The Archaeology of Mind: ?Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotion, will be published in July.
------------end quote----------

See?  Just understand the brain, and you are master of life, the universe, and everything.

There really is nothing else.  Right? 

We can research, re-invent and re-define our Primary or Primal Emotions, and re-arrange ourselves and our lives any way we want.  A little electrical stimulus fixes everything.

These articles on the brain and emotions make perfect sense to us.  What more do you need to know? 
So now you know, can you explain why you cry at weddings? 

If Grief is a Primal Emotion, then it's obvious why we cry at Funerals, isn't it?  Grief is personal, and composed of feeling sorry for oneself at the same time as feeling what it is like to be the person whose life has ended.  How will your life end?  Is there any meaning to anything we do?

Clearly grief is uncomplicated and thus Primal.

Notice the absence of LOVE as a Primal emotion.  Is that absence congruent with your model of reality? 

Now look at this Kabbalah inspired article on the 7 Primary Emotions
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/277116/jewish/Introduction.htm

---------quote-----------
The seven emotional attributes are:

• Chesed - Loving-kindness
  Week 1 of the Omer
• Gevurah -- Justice and discipline
  Week 2 of the Omer
• Tiferet - Harmony, compassion
  Week 3 of the Omer
• Netzach - Endurance
  Week 4 of the Omer
• Hod - Humility
  Week 5 of the Omer
• Yesod - Bonding
  Week 6 of the Omer
• Malchut - Sovereignty, leadership
  Week 7 of the Omer

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

Note how each of the 7 Primary Emotions listed on that page is composed of "cross-terms" as they say in math, or harmonics as they say in Astrology, or how an artist mixes colors to make new hues, making a palate of 49 Emotions which these exercises are designed to mature.

With maturity of these emotional states, the corresponding negative emotions cited in scientific articles are absorbed and dissipated by the light of these powerful emotions.  One's internal emotional climate shifts -- yes, climate change -- and the world seems brighter.  And the burst of tears at weddings becomes more explicable, perceptible as a glimpse of something too bright to look at directly. 

Click the links on the page to find the mixtures, which make it easier to sort out the melange of emotions causing that Cry At The Wedding outburst. 

Note this list starts with LOVE.

It starts with Loving-Kindness.

What does it feel like when someone looks at you with Loving-Kindness in their eyes?  I know you've seen it, but have you ever named it out loud?

Also note that LOVE is a component of every one of the other 6 emotions in the list. 

This 49-element model of human emotion uses LOVE as the power-source behind all emotion. 

You can't act in Justice without Love, and so on.  Love is the primary component, the origin and the source powering all others. But look at what "all others" includes -- but most especially does not include in this list of 7 Primary Emotions that combine to drive the human spirit.

Also note Grief is not on the list of 49.  Nor Fear.  This 7-Emotion paradigm depicts a totally different Reality than any of the other lists of primary emotions.

So think hard.  Is this portrait of Human Emotion more akin to your own internal primary emotions?  Does this depict your reality, or the reality you glimpse at the moment you burst into tears at a Wedding?


You may want to buy the following book which explains (though that's not what it was written for) how to create plot-events or symbols from these abstraction emotions. 

In this book:
 http://store.chabad.org/product.asp?Product=bk-mlc-counteng
Which you can also buy on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Counting-Omer-Simon-Jacobson/dp/188658723X/

...each of the 49 individual Emotions discussed comes with a do-it-today exercise that is a challenge to your ordinary way of looking at the world.  These exercises, done in this sequence, strip calluses and leave vulnerability. 

To find out when the Omer is counted, search the App store (iPhone or iPad, probably Android too) for Omer.  Or the Android store.  There are lots of free apps, and some with in-app purchases.  An app usually uses your phone's local time to alert you to the day of the Omer being counted.

Starting with Passover and going 49 days to The Feast of Weeks, each day contains a plot-twist, and each annual repetition is no repetition at all, but rather a unique experience in learning about Emotion. 

You've heard the term "Emotional Intelligence?"  This exercise is preparation for an Emotional Intelligence test. 

There is a mystical (Kabbalah) tie between the day of the Lunar calendar and the action suggested in the exercises.  The idea is that doing that particular exercise on that specific day amplifies the effect the action has on your Emotional Intelligence in a way that doing it at another time would not have. 

The greater your emotional intelligence, the more effective you can be as a writer orchestrating emotional responses in your readers by using concrete plot-actions coupled with symbolism.

With that understanding grasped, let's get back to Weddings as a plot-Event.

As previously noted, the Romance part of a character's story is generally over at the Proposal.

But sometimes the hottest Romances start with a Wedding scene for mutual friend or relatives where the couple first meets -- during or after one of those Crying At A Wedding moments.

Eyes swimming, they see each other through rose-colored tears -- all the sharp edges and harsh lines of character flaws blurred out, and Loving Kindness sweeps them off their feet.

Now why do we understand the Crying At A Wedding moment to be a natural prelude to meeting a Soul Mate? 

If you've never seen it happen, never heard of it happening to anyone you know, still you find it an acceptable postulate to kick off a Relationship driven story.

Another good moment to start a Romance is at a Funeral -- during or after the crying, and desperately trying not to cry scene.

Likewise, there are meetings over a parent's death-bed, in a Court Room awaiting a death sentence, at the scene of a car accident, by the ambulances in front of a house going up in flames, amid the rubble of an earthquake or bombing in a war. 

These are moments of peak emotion, moments when the whole nervous system is in fear-fight-flight mode, constant orientation response mode.

These are not normal, everyday, get groceries and pick up the kids from school moments. 

The emotional peaking stretches the old emotional scars and calluses that ordinarily cover up our emotions and blunt the ability to respond to minor incoming stimuli.

 
These are moments of vulnerability when we can let another person "in" and give of ourselves in ways we ordinarily do not.  Connections can be made at such moments where the cracks in our emotional armor are spread wide.

Emotions welling up can crack that shell from the inside and leave sensitive surfaces exposed, vulnerable.

That happens at Weddings, and other Life Event Ceremonies.  Retirement ceremonies work.  Presidential Inaugural, or swearing in ceremonies. 

But just feeling emotion welling up doesn't cause that very odd, very peculiar and distinctive flash of tears common to the "Crying At A Wedding" moment.

Commonly, the tears well at the moment Bride or Groom says "I do" (or whatever they've written).

Or at the giving of the token (symbolism) - traditionally a ring.

Or at the first kiss -- which is likely not the very first, but is the first as a married couple.

The tears burn up out of the eyes at the moment recognized as "Everything Just Changed."

This is the moment the Future morphs, partly because of what the couple did and partly because you recognized the shift in Reality. 

We live in a state of taking things "for granted" -- of relying on assumptions.  We understand science, we understand ourselves as mortal animals governed by a complex brain - and that's it.

We just can't handle all the variables necessary to envision reality on many levels, extending along many axes, beyond infinity.  It's too much.  We can't work the problems of our lives with too much information.

So we cut down on our perceptions, hide behind emotional callus, and won't admit there is anything there that we are not feeling the presence of.

In these peak moments of life, though, the callus cracks, stretches open and exposes the tender flesh that can feel the "salt" -- the foreign substance -- hear the faint whisper of mystical Presence -- smell the whiff of the Garden of Eden -- taste mana. 

I'm using Biblical references because most readers will understand them.  But this ultimate truth perception-shift happens for everyone of every faith (atheist, too). 

You can use the Wedding Tears as a symbol to move your readers because it is common across all belief systems.

It is a moment in which some people experience confirmation that their Beliefs are true, not beliefs at all but really True-Truth, and that is astonishing and too painful to encompass.  Such a discovery is always followed by flinching away from it -- as if it were painful.

It is also a moment in which some people experience confrontation with the knowledge that everything they believe about Reality just is not true -- or not as complete a picture of Reality as they thought.

Either way, the callus cracks, like the clouds parting and letting sunlight into a dark day -- and we wince just as when sudden light in darkness causes a reflex to close our eyelids.

It is a "pull the rug out from under you" moment, a moment of astonishment when nothing you thought you could depend on actually works.

It is the moment between being shot and noticing that you're dead.

It occurs at that point where pleasure and pain join, where the scream of pain and the shout of laughter are indistinguishable. 

The physical nerves "white-out" and something else continues to perceive .... something.  It isn't the universe as you know it, but the universe unfiltered by your defending calluses.

There is the Uncertainty Principle -- where the observer changes the observed by the simple act of observing.  By noticing that The Future Changed at the moment two souls join, you have changed The Future.

Hence weddings must have Witnesses.  The act of Witnessing is the act of changing.

And that is not possible in the World As We Know It.  Just because I see you does not change you. 

Yet in some other Reality -- yes, it is true.  Two Souls mate and the Third Soul composed of the Two United is changed by the observation of the Witnesses.  So who witnesses can change the course of the marriage.  "I danced at your wedding," makes a difference.

Reality itself warps during these Life Event moments (and with our population in the billions, there are lots of such Events every moment the Earth turns).  Reality warps again as the moments are witnessed.

You've heard the phrase, "Don't look! You can't un-see this!" -- often applied to a gruesome accident or an atrocity. 

Once you have witnessed something, it becomes a part of you and can change the direction of your life.  Hence WITSEC - the Witness Protection Program.  You see it; you testify; you can not be the same person anymore or they will kill you for testifying.

The same is true of Weddings.  The knowledge that you are no longer the same person causes the tears -- grief for who you used to be, joy for all the new possibilities in your life, and maybe Love of God or whatever you deem the source of that searing brightness that lances into your vulnerable cracks.

 
Is it God?  Do you need to postulate that God Is Real or to admit the Soul is Real to understand why you cry at weddings? No, you don't have to.  It is one explanation that works fairly well for some people, but not the only one that covers all the observations.

Few come away from a crying jag at a wedding convinced that God came down and married these two Souls.  In fact, most people would think you crazy for saying that. 

Most people can point to sentimental reasons, memories of other weddings, realization of hopes for the new couple, poignant sorrow at the failure of their own marriage, cynical foreknowledge that this new couple will likewise part, and a piercing hope that, "No, not this time!"

So many mixed emotions clashing with each other create quite enough almost-pain to account for the buckets of tears shed at weddings down the ages.

Compare the tears shed at a Wedding with the burst of tears when you witness (even via TV) a heroic act, or a life sacrificed to save another, perhaps a helpless baby.  Compare the Wedding sensation with witnessing an Event such as how the USA responded during the 9/11 Attacks, or someone's worthy deed being given a worthy award.

Consider any movie or novel that you cried through the last ten minutes or twenty pages.  Finally, finally it all comes out right in the end and your faith in human nature is justified.

Each of these moments speaks in symbols, in traditions, in customs, in passing the torch to the next generation and finding them worthy - in symbols that affirm the continuity of human civilization.

Those symbols, arranged just-so, blindside us with a stab of hot emotion too searing to bear for more than an instant.  Just as when the dentist drills into a tooth and your eye waters, something from outside your callused shell breaks through to exposed nerve and you FEEL it.

That "It" that you feel may as well not exist in your life at all before and after that moment, just like the dentist's drill is always in his office but doesn't always hurt you.

What is that "It?"  What is it that comes through your cracks and hits a nerve in those peak moments of life?

Those who are bored at Weddings, or do not cry or feel deeply (maybe only come to get drunk?) may simply be too afraid of the nascent pain to let their calluses crack open even a little, to let that sensation happen to them. 

Naming that "It" gives you a Theme.  Shrouding that "It" in symbolism gives you a way of explaining what that "It" is to your reader, who may be one of those bored at a wedding type people. 

We see that "It" as "light" -- the kind of Light by which the Third Eye sees.  The wince away from that Light at Weddings is the Third Eyelid squinching shut after Witnessing the souls joined.

The "light" is so bright, the flash through our cracks so sudden, we can't See what's behind it, what's causing it, what's emitting that Light.  To us, it is only "It." 

  

"It" is amorphous.  To make a novel out of "It" manifesting in this world, you have to Name it. 

Your thesis for your theme is a Worldbuilding element.  In this World where these Characters live, Magic is Real, Evil is Palpable and Profitable, Good Always Wins (or Loses?).  Those are themes you never state in words, but mold into the fabric of your World. 

What is the "It" that intrudes at Life Ceremony Moments? Name that "It" and the name becomes your Theme.  "This is a World where "It" is (God, Devil, Demons, Angels, Aliens).  Each choice is a statement about that theme, and dictates the symbols that will be meaningful to your readers.  


Weddings have symbols and traditions for a reason. 

Use that reason even when you have your couple write their own vows and create new traditions.  Every tradition was done for the first time sometime.  Not all first time traditions last more than a generation.









One way to research current traditions is to search Pinterest for Wedding, Bride, Bride and Groom, and related keywords you can think of.  Wedding Planners and Photographers and Caterers are using Pinterest to present their services, and encourage innovative Weddings that won't bore the guests.  You can use their posted images to develop the symbolism in which to discuss your Theme.

 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Advanced Copyright Issues On The Internet

This is a long .pdf (700 plus pages) and dates from March 2014 but every copyright owner or aspiring copyright owner could benefit from skimming it.

http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=35a047ff-4fe9-4796-9a8e-d5b258ad9838

My principle take-away from this is that copyright owners have many rights, but since the internet is global, users who create copies of a copyrighted work may have overlapping liability in many different countries, not all of which follow and enforce the same copyright laws.

Kudos to the law firm Fenwick and West LLP.

Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry

Polygyny in a Matriarchy

I recently read A BROTHER'S PRICE by Wen Spencer and was fascinated by its world-building. The society in this novel has gender relationships and a marriage structure like nothing in our history that I've heard of. (The world of the novel seems to have some alternate-universe connection to ours, because Hera-worship dominates their religion.) The driving force of the culture springs from a vast numerical imbalance between the sexes; males are much rarer than females. As far as I noticed, the novel doesn't make it clear whether few males are conceived, most male fetuses die by miscarriage or stillbirth, or some of both. Since the technological level appears to correspond to our nineteenth century at most, maybe earlier in some fields, their medical science might not even know the ratio of male to female conceptions. As in Jacqueline's Sime-Gen universe, no explanation is offered for this status quo. It's simply a sad fact of their biology. Unlike the Simes and Gens, the people of Spencer's world don't have even a distant legendary memory of a time when things were different; at one point the hero and heroine laugh at the notion of a one man-one woman marriage.

Spencer explores the ramifications of these gender roles in a strongly plotted story full of emotion and suspense. She made me believe, for the duration of the novel, that a man could fall in love with a family of sisters and they could happily share him. Kinship altruism operates in this arrangement—that is, the organism "wants" to contribute to the well-being of an organism carrying many of the same genes. A group of sisters marries one man (some of the girls might be too young for mating at the time of marriage, but they're still legally his wives). He fathers as many children as possible on as many of them as possible. A family blessed with more than one boy child is unusually fortunate. When the younger generation reaches marriageable age, they either purchase a husband or, if they can't afford "a brother's price," trade brothers with a neighboring family. Women who want children but can't acquire a husband in either of those ways can go to a "crib," where men have sex with women for money (not paid to the men, who have no legal rights—paid to the crib owner).

I love the way Spencer develops the inevitable results of the gender imbalance in matters large and small. Naturally, in this world women perform all the significant economic and political roles, including military service. Men and boys are far too valuable to put them at risk in the wider society. They stay safe at home, caring for their younger siblings, until they're married off. The Whistler clan, to which the young hero belongs, is exceptional in teaching its sons to read, write, and defend themselves. They don't live in a culture of safety and luxury, not even the prosperous households. Families feud with each other. Piracy, banditry, and husband-raiding are not uncommon. Boys are guarded like Victorian maidens. Their sisters dress them to attract female admiration (but they shouldn't dress like sluts). They wear veils in public, and when the hero raises his veil in a city street, he's scolded for tempting women with what they can't have. Women treat males like girl children in our culture pre-women's-liberation, expected to be charming and brainless; women the hero has just met regularly address him as "sweetheart," "honey," etc. Boys are required to maintain their virginity until marriage, since custom places heavy emphasis on both men and women staying "clean," for an STD can spread from one person to a dozen or more within a marriage. (Examination for venereal disease, in addition to a sperm count, is an essential part of determining a boy's eligibility as a prospective husband.) If an illicit sexual encounter occurs, it's the woman's fault, and seduction is censured almost as sternly as rape. After all, a man learns from earliest childhood that he has to obey women. Some women do rape men, with the use of drugs. If male-on-female rape occurs, it's not mentioned in the novel, and we'd expect it to be very rare. Men virtually never have unchaperoned access to females outside their own families, and in a culture of male scarcity, virtually all men can hope to marry. The lesbian activity we'd expect to accompany a shortage of men is mentioned but doesn't play any part in the plot.

The story combines action and political intrigue with gender-flipped romantic problems. A naive boy from a family of prosperous commoners falls in love with a princess. Not only does she have to dig up an ancestral connection that makes him eligible to marry into the royal family, there's the added complication that in this world she has to win the consent of all her sisters old enough to have a say in the choice of husband.

Polygyny in A BROTHER'S PRICE differs from the same marriage structure in our world because of the social dominance of women, which in turn arises from their numerical dominance. In real-world history, with approximately equal numbers of each sex, polygynous societies allow rich and powerful men to accumulate multiple wives, while poorer men have to settle for one bride or none. In that situation, women have little overt power, while men rule society and their own households. In Spencer's world, males are far too few to dominate women, and it's the women, not the men, who have established polygyny out of necessity. In fact, men don't particularly want too large a number of wives (and women aren't particularly eager to share a husband with a huge number of sisters, so a family that grows too large tends to split amicably into two households).

This book fulfills the prime requirement of SF romance, that both the romance and the SF content are necessary to the plot. The story wouldn't work without both of those components.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Symbolism Integration Part 2 Why Do We Cry At Weddings Part 1 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Symbolism Integration
Part 2
Why Do We Cry At Weddings?
Part 1
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Symbolism Integration Part 1 is here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/12/theme-symbolism-integration-part-1-you.html

So why do you cry at Weddings?

At what point in the ceremony are you most prone to burst into tears, or at  least gasp and blink and wish you'd remembered to bring tissues?

Does the point where you burst into sniffles signify a different reason for the emotional upwelling? 

Do you get that same feeling just looking at the pictures later? 

If you, the Romance writer, have no answer to that question, "Why?" then how can you portray, depict or evoke that crucial moment for your readers?

Do you fall back on cliche, or tell not show and just say "she sniffled" or had to leave because she was sobbing out loud? 

Have you ever examined that inner-emotional-WHAM that fills your eyes to the brim, in step by step analytical detail so that you know all the elements that compose that sob/gasp/whoom!

Have you ever experienced that kind of blast/scream of mysterious emotion in any other context?

Can you summon it at will, turn it this way and that, and dissect it so you can recreate it for readers who have never experienced it? 
 

Yes, some of your readers have never felt that exquisite pain/pleasure of crying at a wedding.

Some just suffer through weddings and consider it boring, never responding to the emotion of the moment.  Some are too overwhelmed by their own resentment or jealousy that someone else is getting married and they have no chance of ever having that moment.  Some are too overwrought by responsibility for "everything to go right" and can't feel the moment.  Some have only been to weddings where they were bridesmaids in pinching shoes and "the wrong color" for their body type. 

But do you know that flashing-burst of emotion intimately?  Do you feel it only at weddings?  Or does it come at other moments? 

Is the "at weddings" flash the same as that which comes over you on other occasions?  Is there something similar tying together the "at weddings" tears with tears that flood over you at other kinds of moments? 

If you can catalog, then contrast/compare the wash of tears brought on by various triggers and put words to the cause, to what your heart-of-hearts is responding to and why it is tender in that area, then you have nailed the ultimate theme of all Romance, or at the very least of all Soul-Mate based Romance. 

Here is a recent article on "triggers" and how society is conditioning young people to handle triggers:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/

Does that spark of emotion akin to that at weddings just blindside you from time to time, get pushed aside because sobbing out loud would be inappropriate or embarrassing, and then disappear onto a dusty shelf in your mind, not cataloged by any keyword?

Do you pay attention to the whipsaw emotional responses you have as you wander through life?  If so, chances are good you are a writer -- even if you've never written anything other than your signature.

Classical Romance generally finishes off before the Wedding, perhaps at the proposal or the acceptance, but rarely continues into the practicality of planning a personal extravaganza.  Sometimes, driving off to Las Vegas for an Elvis Presley wedding makes a good Ending.  But mostly, the "romance" part is over when practical, real life begins. 

Astrologically, Neptune rules Romance -- the blurry veils that soften reality and make everything beautiful.  Saturn rules practicality, things like the Wedding budget, choice of menu, caterer, venue, how many guests you can invite to your Wedding, and so on. 

Wedding Planners make their living off the fact that the Romance is still smothering the Couple's ability to manage mundane details in a business-like manner.  The Wedding Planner's job is to create a cloud of dreamy beauty to cushion and waft the couple into a heavenly honeymoon. 

Meanwhile, the prospective in-laws are trying to repair the errors they made at their weddings by imposing their dreams on the new couple.

Criss-crossing currents of fury/hope/grim-determination (not to mention pinching shoes) often interfere with Event Planning.  So people today try to out-source it all by hiring a professional to put on a pageant where the Couple can be the stars of the show.

 One of the things Wedding Planners do is create that sentimental moment where there is not a dry eye in the house.  That's showmanship, it is show-don't-tell, and it is symbolism.  The key to invoking the most powerful symbolism is theme.

Here are some previous posts where we have explored how to use Theme and Symbolism and other techniques that build your fictional world around creating such a powerful moment your reader cries -- just as they would at a wedding. 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-to-use-theme-in-writing-romance.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/04/index-to-theme-worldbuilding.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html

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

To create such a tear jerker moment in your fictional wedding, you may not need to understand what is going on inside you when you burst-into-tears, and try to push down and contain your response.  But some writers do need to articulate the unnameable in order to nail it effectively.

If you have experienced that wordless sensation that causes the flood of tears, you can very likely replicate it for many of your readers.  But if you have just used the material (the symbolism) that jerks your tears, you may leave a good part of your readership cold because you did not include the symbols that represent their vulnerable spot.

Your vulnerable spot does not have to be the same as their vulnerable spot if you understand vulnerability in general. 

Most people do not understand why they feel the way they do -- and of course there is no one answer that explains any particular emotion in everyone.

Emotion is in that realm beyond language.

The alphabet of emotion is symbolism.

Neptune rules symbolism, and Saturn & Mercury rule vocabulary definitions.

Neptune rules Romance, and Romance speaks in symbols. 

Hence weddings fraught with traditional symbolism hit vulnerable spots in almost everyone -- but the spot and the vulnerability are different for each person.

The response of crying at a wedding is idiosyncratic, individualistic, and simply will not be crammed into a word.  There is no language to that gut-grunting-screech of a cry.

If the triggers are so diverse, and the inner-meaning so idiosyncratic, then why is the experience so wide-spread, so common?

Crying at a wedding isn't something that happens once in a lifetime.  Some people cry at every wedding.  Some people experience that wham of emotion under other circumstances besides weddings.  Baby Showers?  Christenings? And of course funerals, but those tears feel different.

So next week we'll look at this blindsiding gut-punch emotional flash in more clinical detail to  understand what you, as a writer, can do with it.

Meanwhile, go watch a movie that makes you cry, hit pause and feel that feeling.  Notice what it is doing inside you.  Watch for similar responses you have to commercials, to cute-animals on Facebook, to your kids' graduation, and even to funerals, or Award Ceremonies.  Tributes to fallen heroes.  Whatever stirs and moves you with a surprise flash and upwelling eyes.  

What is going on inside you when you cry at the sight of something external to you? 

You will find the images in this post on my Pinterest collection Entertainment and Information, with links to the Wedding Planners and other contractors a Bride needs.
https://www.pinterest.com/AmbrovZeor/entertainment-information-sources/

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

It Was True In 2013 and Is Just As True Today (Digital Piracy)

This article by Chris Whitten was published by The Trichordist in 2013.
http://thetrichordist.com/2013/12/03/the-politics-of-piracy-guest-post-by-chris-whitten/ 

It's about the politics of piracy.

The author makes an assertion about Australians, and I must confess, I have noticed Australian addresses when I have used GoDaddy's "WhoIs" search to discover the registration of sites that are allegedly pirating my books, such as minkebooks.org

By now, "contact@privacyprotect.org" should have prevailed upon their secretive clients to take down my works such as:

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=http://www.minkebooks.org/files/h9h2m_knight-s-fork-love-spell-futuristic-romance-.pdf&ct=ga&cd=CAEYACoSMTE4MTg2Mjg3NTgwNjQwMDM0MhozYzVhOTNmZjZjYjVmMzU0OmNvbTplbjpVUw&usg=AFQjCNH2Sqi8ju3c2Z9qHrSOrBGPe925IA

One wonders (at least, I wonder) why people can make a living --lawfully-- out of thwarting the ability of intellectual property owners to directly contact persons who are allegedly violating copyrights.

IMHO, EBay does the same thing. For how many years, I wonder, have EBay sellers been burning thousands of copyrighted ebooks onto CDs and DVDs (sometimes more than 69 times... why 69? Is it a magic number for erotica???) in collections such as this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2500-Romance-and-Crime-Thriller-Ebooks-Mobi-Pdf-Epub-with-lots-of-Great-Titles-/141010616211?hash=item20d4e33f93

Does anyone really think that Nora Roberts, Patti O'Shea, Patricia Cornwell, Rachel Caine and others granted EBay sellers their copyrights and resale rights?  If I were to purchase this collection, I should not be at all surprised to discover some of my illegally created works in the batch... but if I were to complain, as I have done many times over the years for similar DVDs where I have bought them and found my works on them, EBay would not tell the purchasers, and the purchasers would in their turn sell the same ebooks. As for me, I would not even be allowed to post feedback informing the world that the seller had infringed my copyrights.

My best wishes,

Rowena Cherry

The Mockingbird and the Watchman

I've just finished reading the "new" Harper Lee novel, GO SET A WATCHMAN, partly a first draft of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and partly a sequel to it. Regarding the controversy of whether Atticus Finch's racism in this story is inconsistent with his character in the classic novel: Although it's been many years since I read TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, I'd say it's not. The poisonous harangue of the guest speaker at the meeting of the "citizens' council" Atticus belongs to in GO SET A WATCHMAN doesn't reflect the old lawyer's views. He's unfailingly courteous to black people as individuals. He does take a paternalistic attitude toward them as a race, labeling them "in their childhood as a people," in need of gradual uplifting before they can exercise full participation in public life. He's a "states' rights" fanatic, resentful of the Supreme Court and the NAACP for pushing the South too far too fast (as he sees it). In short, he's what would have been classified as a moderate in that time and place. That position isn't incompatible with seeking justice for an innocent black man as an individual, as Atticus does in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. The contemporary reader's outrage and disillusionment, I believe, aren't evidence of inconsistency on the author's part; they reflect Jean Louise's own feelings. The main point of the book centers on her coming to terms with her father as a flawed human being, not the "god" she has idolized.

Should GO SET A WATCHMAN have been published? Setting aside the issue of whether Harper Lee was manipulated into signing the contract without her informed consent (a grave question, but one that can't be answered without more information than we have), should an author's early "trunk novels" or first drafts not intended for publication be released into the world? As a lit-crit person, of course, I'd say yes. The more material we have with which to understand a writer, the better. I might go so far as to claim (though I admit to some ambivalence about the ethics here) that a literary executor's duty to preserve literature for posterity supersedes a dead author's wish to have manuscripts posthumously destroyed. (If the author really wanted them never to be read, why didn't he or she destroy them in life?)

The Amazon blurb says WATCHMAN adds "depth, context, and new meaning" to the original novel. Does it? Or should it be read as a separate work that leaves MOCKINGBIRD where it always was? It has to be considered an alternate-universe story to some extent, because of discrepancies such as the acquittal of the alleged rapist who was convicted in MOCKINGBIRD. Yet in most respects the "new" book maintains continuity with the original one. That question reminds me of a discussion I once had with a fellow reader about the protagonist of one of my favorite vampire novels. In expressing my opinions about the protagonist and one of the major supporting characters, I drew upon a play the author adapted from a section of the novel (in both the drama's published and unpublished versions) and statements made by the author in interviews. My friend considered all those sources irrelevant. To her, only the contents of the novel itself constituted acceptable material from which to derive judgments about the behavior of characters within that book. (While we haven't discussed the Harry Potter universe, I suspect she'd dismiss Rowling's statement about Dumbledore's sexual orientation as having no relevance to the canonical series.)

In the case of Harper Lee's canon, we'd first have to determine whether Atticus Finch is the "same person" in both novels or whether GO SET A WATCHMAN takes place in a completely alternate universe. Galanty Miller claims on the Huffington Post blog, "There is no Atticus Finch outside the pages of that book [TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD]" and calls Atticus in GO SET A WATCHMAN "a completely different character with the same name." If we disagree with Miller and consider Atticus the same character in both books, however, does the first-written but later-published work legitimately throw fresh light (or shadow) on the character as he appears in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Targeting A Readership Part 10 - The Sad Puppy Hugo Controversy

Targeting A Readership
Part 10
The Sad Puppy Hugo Controversy
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Here is the Index post to this Targeting a Readership series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/index-to-targeting-readership-series-by.html

This Hugo Vote controversy is a sensitive issue.  The underlying issue actually targets the whole Presidential Election Cycle which is shaping up to reflect the cultural shift in America.

The Hugo Awards (a reader popularity contest) Voters do now represent a cross section of America with major infusion of voters from many countries because Science Fiction has gone Mainstream.

We often use the term "Values Voter" to refer to people who vote according to some very strict, Religion based, code of what is more important than what (Values are a prioritization of the issues, not a particular stance on a precise issue.)

The term, Values Voter, is another "Misnomer" -- a very popular one that totally misleads, and sows the seeds of behavior ( a great technique for characterization by actions).

See my clues about how a Romance Writer can use the Misnomer in dialogue to good effect:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/02/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-6.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/05/dialogue-part-7-gigolo-and-lounge.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/story-springboards-part-3-art-of.html

And a large number of references to misnomers in the series on how to write Dialogue:

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

We are all Values Voters -- we vote our own values. 

We try to discern some kind of similarity between our Values and the Values of the candidates, but in the end our behavior is shaped by the candidate's words -- and non-verbal cues, replete with misnomers.  We trust people with Values we can discern as similar to our own.

As a writer looking to Target a Readership (sell a lot of copies to people who will tell their friends all about the book), you profit by being aware of the Values common among your target Readers.  As a Science Fiction writer, you would expect to be welcome to challenge those most cherished Values of your readership -- but at the end of the novel, the moral of the story has to confirm the righteousness of your reader's Values.

If you are not going to confirm your reader's righteousness, you might consider whether your idea would work better as non-fiction.  Some genres of Fiction do welcome the 'disturbing' story.  Science Fiction used to be one of those.  Romance is taking over that niche.  But do your research.  Read a slew of novels from the imprint you want to sell to.   

In general, the novels considered Art or Great Art have characters who espouse the target reader's Values, characters who oppose those Values, and characters who are making up their minds (or changing their minds).  Religious Conversion stories are one such, Romance Triangle stories another, Building A Business stories do this, too and Benedict Arnold betrayal/spying/double-agent stories are perhaps the most famous for it. 

When you "have an idea" for a story or novel, it is your idea.  It comes up out of your Values.  If you don't know what your Values are, you may have a problem separating the points of view in your stories into separate characters who remain consistent and thus believable even when changing their minds. 

Values are the core material out of which you fabricate Theme. 

Today, in the USA, we are in a transition culture which is split 40%/40% with 20% in the middle (either underinformed, not-thinking, or in-transition). 

The media has muddied the waters by imposing artificial distinctions (misnomers) on the underlying arguments, often confusing methods with goals. 

As I see it, nobody is against Love -- but 40% are against Gay Marriage.  Nobody is against women, but 40% oppose abortion and/or birth control. 

You may know where you stand on Gay Marriage or Abortion -- but are you crystal clear in your own mind about why you stand there?  Where did you get the idea that you think is correct?

Or do you just stand in opposition to the idiots on the other side?

Do you know what evidence might change your mind?

If you don't know what could change your mind, you can't formulate a deep and believable Character who changes from one position to the other.  So you can't write the Story (the Character's Internal Conflict moving to a Resolution), because all Characters must "Arc" or change in some fundamental way from one point of view to another because of what happens to them, because of the Plot Events.

Characters must "learn their lesson." If you don't know where you got your ideas of correct Values, and why you think they are correct, and what would change your mind, you won't write convincingly about a character who learns his/her lesson.

Take War as another issue: we're all against war, destruction, killing.  But some of us have an alternative procedure in mind for resolving a conflict, and for recognizing a resolved conflict when we see one -- and others don't. 

The writer has to be able to argue both the Political Right and the Political Left (as defined by the Media of the USA in 2015) in order to capture a 2015 readership.

In a long series of long novels, you can redefine Right and Left, Liberal and Conservative.  In a short story, you need to use shorthand for these positions. 

If you are of the Left or even the Middle and can envision a Character who shares that Value set, can you also slip into the point of view of the Right and argue that Value set with equal passion?

Can you argue the Right's position in a way that would convince a reader whose personal position is Right that you, yourself, are aligned with the Right?  Good writers do that, routinely. 

It doesn't matter where you set your Romance, or whether it's Science Fiction or Fantasy Romance, or even Paranormal -- or Historical with characters from the 1700's via time travel -- to produce a story that is Art, you must be able to think and feel like readers of the opposing Value Set, or from a time when sets of Values were not divided into opposing camps the way they are today.

Read some international news sources online during their political campaigns to discover how differently the labels "Right" and "Left" are used elsewhere.  The divisions we use in the USA today are not the divisions that arise from the fundamentals of the Universe.  They are misnomers fabricated by journalists whose readers have no patience with long phrases repeated.  

Depicting all sorts of Values convincingly is the meaning of a) Conflict is the Essence of Story, and b) Show Don't Tell.

Show Don't Tell is the main subject of the series on Depiction:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

So, if a novel has characters who portray with passion and verisimilitude only the traits and beliefs of one of the factions among the Targeted Audience (say the Political Right), the other factions among the Targeted Audience may conclude that the AUTHOR is of the Political Right.

That confusion of Story, Plot and Author's Personal Convictions is the core of the controversy over Intolerance in the Hugo Awards.  This is tagged the Sad Puppy controversy -- and another group joined in tagged the Rabid Puppies.

This controversy has emerged in Major Media and is drawing attention to Science Fiction as a genre.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-culture-wars-invade-science-fiction-1431707195

http://www.mhpbooks.com/hugo-awards-nominees-withdraw-over-political-controversy/  is a description of the issue by a major publisher's blog.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/17/hugo-award-nominees-withdraw-amid-puppygate-storm  is on The Guardian.

Where Intolerance has been triggered in a reader by a fictional character, the author of the character becomes the target of the very real wrath of the reader.  Or where an author has expressed a real-world-view at variance with the prevailing group view of the reader, that author's fiction becomes the target of Intolerance. 

The Fans of the Literature of Ideas seem to have become intolerant of Ideas, especially Crazy Ideas.

Ideas are separate from the people who hold them.  Throughout a lifetime, people change their Ideas and Values maybe three to five times -- some more than that.

The confusion of Idea with the Holder of the Idea may be the result of the avalanche of misnomers flooding the media and personal speech.  Or perhaps the confusion has created the misnomers.


If the Left/Right controversy is not the core issue in the novel's Conflict, you might think that it wouldn't matter whether there are characters representing all sides.

That may have been true some decades ago, but today there is heightened sensitivity to disagreement with unconsciously held beliefs. 

People who do not know why they believe what they believe are most sensitive to Characters who portray a divergent view.  This sensitivity happens when people adopt the beliefs of other people, instead of meticulously reasoning from their own Values to a belief that conforms with their Values.

If you haven't done the work, you do not own the Belief.  It is not yours, so you can't defend it. You can only attack anyone threatening to take your Belief away. 

If you, as writer, successfully portray a character who does not hold your Values, and that character's Values are at odds with a reader's values, and that reader has no clue why they believe what they believe, they are helpless to argue against your compelling character.  The result is rage, not engagement, among those readers.  That rage will be vented on you, the writer -- not the character you created.

Consider the classic Romance situation where two Teens fall in love, and the parents disapprove of the chosen.  The Teens will not, together or individually, be able to argue with their parents, point by point in favor of their chosen, explaining exactly what traits make that chosen a perfect Soul Mate.   So instead of presenting their reasons, and arguing their parents into agreeing with them, the Teens yell, scream, stomp, elope, and vilify the parents. 

That Romance Classic situation is exactly what is happening in the Sad Puppy Hugo Controversy.  People who are passionately dedicated to an idealistic vision don't know how they got that vision, and so can not defend their espousal of that vision with arguments that could change the opposition into supporters.  If you don't know what to say, you scream vilification.

So now to the Hugo Awards.  The Hugo is Awarded by the World Science Fiction Society at the World Science Fiction Convention.  The only people who may vote for this award are members -- paid a membership fee to the convention. 

This is in contrast to the Nebula which is voted by dues paying members of the Science Fiction Writers of America -- professional writers.

The Hugo is not voted by all science fiction readers, or all science fiction fans.

The Hugo Award is voted by members -- and membership is about $200 or more per year.  (less if you register early; sometimes reimbursed if you work at the con.)  Voting but non-attending membership is usually about $40, a lot to pay unless you are supporting a cause. 

Either fee is a lot of money just to express a literary preference.  So the Hugo is usually all about the tastes of a very narrow slice of a broader readership.

These days, there is a very broad swath of the general public who might say, "Yes, I like science fiction.  Hunger Games is great -- Star Trek was nice -- and I Game in the Star Wars universe, of course."

The current trend is that only a tiny percentage of the total Worldcon membership (about 4 or 5 thousand total) vote for the Hugo (a few hundred).  And of those who vote, not all vote in all categories. 

So you can see the Hugo is a popularity contest among a narrow slice of a self-selected group of people who have a total passion for the subject.  It is a well defined Readership which is not so easily Targeted. For the most part, the voters feel obligated to have read all the candidates in the categories they choose to vote. 

Oddly enough, the real-world composition of this tiny slice of Hugo Voters mirrors the Values of the demographic distribution of the general population.

Though Asians, Blacks and Hispanics are under-represented at Worldcon, they are still there.  After Star Trek impacted Science Fiction, the percentage of women evened out almost with the general population. 

But the Left/Right (USA media definition, not European) dichotomy among Hugo voters has leaned Left -- and more and more Left.  The Left takes pride in advocating tolerance.  But now this slice of the Worldcon membership has started to appear intolerant (from the point of view of the Right leaning Worldcon membership and their favorite writers), and that intolerance has become culturally sanctioned.  In the USA, the general public has lost patience with the Far Right mindset. 

Operationally, from the point of view of a writer, it isn't so much "Left" or "Right" or even Liberal vs Conservative (all of which labels are Misnomers.)  The writer must be aware of the readership's choosing of sides in order to create a scrimmage line amidst a melee.   In a bar brawl, friends clump together for mutual defense. 

In 2014, one writer noticed this shift in the formless bar brawl of fan politics and took action to awaken the Political Right among the Hugo Voters -- or members of Worldcon who didn't bother to Vote.  Once they had a defined target in that clump of Right-leaning writers, the Political Left among the Hugo voters struck back in the same way the Political Left does in other venues. 

Here's a seminal blog post that explains the origin of the Sad Puppy Hugo Controversy by its originator:

http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/04/24/an-explanation-about-the-hugo-awards-controversy/

It is a very long post, with the short-explanation at the top, and an even longer, more detailed one at the bottom. 

About the Author who started the Sad Puppy Hugo list.

Larry Correia is the award winning, New York Times bestselling author of the Monster Hunter International Series, the Grimnoir Chronicles, and the Dead Six thrillers. All of my books are available in eBook format from the Kindle store or at Baen.com, and in audiobook on Audible.com. I'm on Facebook or follow me on Twitter at @monsterhunter45.

This Hugo controversy has attracted the general media very large blogs:

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/02/05/the-hugo-wars-how-sci-fis-most-prestigious-awards-became-a-political-battleground/

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/04/08/_2015_hugo_awards_how_the_sad_and_rabid_puppies_took_over_the_sci_fi_nominations.html

https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/02/01/sad-puppies-3-the-2015-hugo-slate/

I do believe there is much more to be said about the Left/Right dichotomy in the USA (or Liberal/Conservative) and especially the surge to dominance in the entertainment arena.  Entertainment is in the business of making a profit.  The larger audience's taste will dominate.

Entertainment is not (necessarily) Art.  In Art, no side or division can "dominate."  That would be bad composition. 

Romance writers are in the Entertainment business.  If there's an error in the way the Left/Right division has been defined, if there's a "misnomer" underlying this division, Romance is the natural genre to use to discuss those errors.  Love Conquers All.

Romance is ruled by Neptune, and Neptune is all about Idealism.  People with a strong Pisces (Neptune "rules" Pisces) emphasis make good Engineers (Scotty on Star Trek).  Romance is where Idealism and Science join into one, seamless whole: Love Conquers All. 

Romance writers must keep tabs on these macro-social developments because the macro trends have a lot to do with the acceptance or rejection of the Happily Ever After ending - the HEA. 

Study what is going on in the general population using the demographic analysis I put forth in this post:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html

Pluto is the slowest moving "planet" which tracks the "Generations."  It spends about 20 years in each sign.  Where it was when you were born determines where it will be throughout the decades of your life -- and describes the "Generation Gap" between you and your children.  Pluto signifies change, revolution, transformation, but magnified with gigantic amounts of Power.

Pluto was in Scorpio, but only 1985 to 1995 (elliptical orbit so it goes faster some times).  That generation (the Millennials ) have the Power of Pluto multiplied by Scorpio, the sign Pluto "rules" or signifies best. 

Study the Power behind the roaring conviction of the 20-30 year old population.

Note Scorpio is the sign that brings forth a determination to defend privacy.  Statistics are showing the Millennials are against government snooping into their phones and computers.  Look to Pluto to time macro-trend-shifts.

 Depending on the distribution of other Natal Chart elements, a person with an exaggerated Pluto emphasis can become a Champion of Freedom or a Ruthless Dictator. 

Study the current Readership you are targeting using the Generation Gap trends. 

Study the Sad Puppy controversy for its heated, powerful, adamant destructiveness, it's undermining of a standing Institution (the Hugo Awards). 

It has been said the instigators of the Puppy controversy are willing to see that the Hugo is never awarded again if it continues to go to nothing but the Left-authors.

And as noted above, several authors who were touted on the Puppy slate have withdrawn their work from consideration.

These two developments illustrate the effects of Pluto when it disrupts a foundation.

Pluto is the "upper octave" Mars, -- Pluto is not just "War" but "Annihilation."  Mars fields an army to fight another army, and take spoils.  Pluto is the tidal wave of genocide, and leaves rubble.  

You must not assume that, just because a person was born between 1985 and 1995, they have a malfunctioning Pluto.  Most people have perfectly fine Pluto placement.

You can never determine anything about an individual by scrutinizing the Groups they belong to.  There are just too many independent variables that make up individuals, and too many misnomers defining Groups.

Our personalities are just like our genes have recently been discovered to be. 

We are born with a set blueprint in our genes, but experiences turn "on" or "off" certain kinds of "expression" of our genes.  Likewise, with personality -- a Natal Chart does not determine what kind of adult will come out of it.  Though we may share individual traits, no two people share every trait.  We start out one thing and become another, and we keep evolving throughout life.  The Idea is not the Person.  People change their Ideas, and often hold contradictory Ideas at the same time because they are in flux. 

MISNOMER: Nature vs. Nurture. 

The misnomer in the Conflict definition Nature vs. Nurture lies in the presentation.  Choose one or the other.  The real world uses 'both and' as the actual way individuals are shaped.  We start with one Natal Chart -- one set of genes, our Nature -- and then our Nature morphs into something else because of the things that happen to us, because of Nurture.  

But with a "Generation," (such as born 1985-1995 ) you can describe a "Readership." Those members who are not "expressing" the fingerprint of their generation will nevertheless have an intuitive grasp of what drives other members of that Generation, a kind of grasp that their elders and their children don't have. 

The same is true of other kinds of Groups people belong to -- all members may not share a trait, but they can find it intriguing to read about a Character who has that trait because they almost understand it at a gut level, a non-verbal level.

One such trait of Pluto is the inability to see any other way to handle opposition other than to undermine and annihilate, to overpower and obliterate.  Revenge is a favorite fantasy of Pluto.  Everyone has a Pluto somewhere and Scorpio is in every Natal Chart.  We all can resonate to these all-or-nothing vibes. 

Mars conducts affairs more the way Gordon R. Dickson's Dorsai did -- do read Dickson's The Tactics of Mistake if you haven't yet. 

http://amazon.com/Tactics-Mistake-Childe-Cycle-Book-ebook/dp/B00H26FU5K/

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Brilliantly witty rant (by Alan Graham)

Alan Graham fulminates over the Creative Commons folks who are now, fourteen years too late, wondering how an author (or other copyright owner) can possibly make money by giving away their copyrights for all and sundry to exploit.

http://thetrichordist.com/2015/07/30/creative-commons-please-share-your-money-to-figure-out-how-sharing-makes-money/#comments

One priceless --and temperately phrased-- quote from Mr. Graham: "It is really hard to make money off of stuff when you teach people it has no value other than attribution, hugs, and hi-fives for how open we all are now."

And the bottom line: "The creative class of artists is teetering on the bring of utter collapse, and they want us to fund a study based on something they should have researched years ago. It makes me angry.

And you should be angry too."

I heartily recommend that you read the full rant.

Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry.

Authors' Guild: "A Publishing Contract Should Not Be Forever"

I'd like to share a link to an informative article by Authors' Guild.

https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/a-publishing-contract-should-not-be-forever/

Many authors' contracts were limited by "in print/out of print" wording, but now that a publisher often asserts ebook rights, an ebook never truly goes out of print, and a protection for authors --of books that are not being promoted, marketed, or profitably exploited-- has been lost.

Other fine Authors' Guild articles on contracts are:

https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/e-book-royalty-math-the-house-always-wins-2/

https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/half-of-net-proceeds-is-the-fair-royalty-rate-for-e-books/


My best wishes,

Rowena Cherry

Un-Development

Last weekend, we took our annual overnight trip to the Shenandoah National Park. When I first saw the mountains and woods as a child, and even later when we camped there during our own children's early years, I thought of that setting as a wilderness. My natural habitat was city (a few years of living with my grandmother in a slightly run-down but still respectable section of Norfolk) and suburbs (the kind of environment Erma Bombeck gently satirized). The Blue Ridge Mountains looked to me like the forest primeval.

As I later learned—definitely not! Contemporary tourists don't see the same land that the first settlers found. For instance, chestnut trees, which once comprised a large percentage of the tree canopy, were nearly wiped out by blight in the early twentieth century. Over the years, invasive species such as starlings and kudzu have been imported.

Far from pristine wilderness, the park has been heavily shaped by human action. Rather than old-growth forest, the woods around the Skyline Drive occupy land once inhabited and farmed by people of the Appalachian Mountains, almost 500 families, who were displaced in the 1930s to make room for the park. Some of them willingly sold their homes to enjoy modern conveniences and the advantages of having highways built through the region. Others resisted the government's offers and were forcibly evicted. The supporters of the park project inaccurately represented the locals as backward, isolated hillbillies who would be better off if dragged into the modern era. Here's some interesting background information:

The Displaced

In the process of founding the park, the area was allegedly "restored" to a state of nature. In fact, the "natural" setting we enjoy today was created by the obliteration of vacated homesteads and the deliberate planting of trees, including varieties not native to the region. Wildlife was introduced, including deer, turkey, trout, and black bears. Signs warn against feeding or otherwise approaching bears, but we've run across only a few. Deer, however, regularly wander near human habitations and are very approachable. You can walk up within a few yards without inciting them to run away, if you don't make any sudden moves. They seem to know, somehow, that they won't be hunted within the park.

The "preservationist vs. developer" trope has become so familiar in fiction that some romance publishers' guidelines forbid stories on that premise. In the Shenandoah National Park, oddly, the preservationists and developers were the same. Commercial interests boosted the park project so they could build lodges and other profit-making enterprises on the newly dedicated federal lands. And yet they did protect wilderness, even if it was modified wilderness, for future visitors—although sometimes at the expense of families who'd lived there for generations. In creating a faux "natural" environment, they were sort of un-developers.

I used the development vs. preservation plot in one of my erotic romance novelettes, "Aquatic Ardor." My hero, who wants to sell part of the land around the lake adjacent to his family's vacation house, now his home, isn't a bad guy. He needs the money to survive in his early retirement lifestyle. The company trying to buy the land plans to build expensive summer residences on large lots, not high-density construction that would wreck the landscape. Unfortunately, the hero doesn't know that an undine lives in the lake, and almost any alteration would ruin it for her:

Aquatic Ardor

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Cookies!!!! (Google May Be The Biggest Cookie Monster Of All)

Dear Friends and Most Welcome Visitors....

European Union laws requires us (the authors of the alien romances blog hosted on Blogger) to give European Union visitors information about cookies used on our blog. In many cases, these laws also require us to obtain your consent. 

By visiting this blog, we (the aliendjinnromances authors) assume that you consent. If you don't consent, please leave a polite comment advising us of which cookies were added, so we may address the issue.

If you feel so inclined, please let us know in a comment what cookies our blog has dumped on your device, too. (We would love the traffic!!)

As a courtesy to us, Google has added a notice on our blog to explain Google's use of certain Blogger and Google cookies, including use of Google Analytics and AdSense cookies. 

https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/6253244?p=eu_cookies_notice&hl=en&rd=1

We think that Google also adds YouTube and Googlevideo cookies.... judging by the cookies I see when I open "Preferences" in my browser.

Google tells us that we are responsible for confirming this notice actually works for our blog, and that it displays. 

If you have seen this notice, or a similar notice posted by Google on our blog, please let us know (by leaving a comment).

PS....   I am unable to leave any comments!  Is anyone else having this problem? It seems that the only people who may comment HAVE to have a Google + account (how tyrannical is that?!!)  Even then, one cannot comment.

Rowena

How to Dissolve Your Expository Lump by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

How to Dissolve Your Expository Lump
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Here are links to previous scattered discussions of Expository Lumps.

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

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/02/dissing-formula-novel.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/crumbling-business-model-of-writers.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/08/source-of-expository-lump-part-2.html

Expository Lumps are the product of a writer's imagination building the story-world for them prior to informing the writer about it all (i.e. the "I have an Idea!" moment.)

In one fell swoop, you know everything about these characters, this world, and its arcane, mundane, and esoteric Relationships.  You know the karmic forces, the rebirths, the life-history -- you know everything all at once and don't know where to start. 

So you sit down to write the story.

You want to take your reader on a wild rafting ride down a swift mountain stream, the plot carrying them along with whoops and screams.  Instead, your reader gets smashed dizzy hitting the rocks in your plot-stream:


The rocks are expository lumps. 

You create those rocks because you want the reader to understand your new world so you say, "But wait! Before you can understand what's going on, you must know this -- oh, and that -- oh! I left out...!!!)

There is all this connected foundation material the reader MUST KNOW FIRST.

Informing the reader so enjoyment and understanding will happen later (but not now) is called an expository lump.  It's a rock that splits the stream of the plot and story apart. 

A lump is more than 1 sentence, more than a pebble. 

Very often, the lumps come in the first or second chapter (or possibly a forward or preface), and the longer you wait to inform your reader, the more paragraphs (even pages) of history, considerations relevant to the characters but not (yet) to the reader, life-story of other characters we haven't met yet, and so on and on get lumped together in a block of text.

Here is how to spot a lump you have created:

Finish the manuscript's first draft. 

Scan the pages and find long, unbroken paragraphs -- they look like lumps, visually, but can be description, dialogue, or even narration. 

These are blocks of paragraphs that do not advance the plot&story in lockstep, do not change the Situation in the direction of the Ending and usually are not about what is going on at that point in the text.  They can be about the past, or about the possibly future (disasters or triumphs, anything that is not-happening-now.)

Expository Lumps are usually not actual scenes -- but a misplaced scene can act like a Lump and kill reader interest.  The cure is to study scene structure:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-tricks-of-scene-structure-part-2.html

Any such not-now material should be half-a-sentence, maybe one or two short sentences -- not full page paragraphs unbroken by things happening, things being done, things being discovered, lessons learned.  Yes, you can do long flash-forwards and flashbacks, but those require the same non-lump techniques and a different set of skills.

Take those lumpy paragraphs apart point by point -- bulleted lists work, but use whatever format you like. Detail what information the reader gains. 

The sign you've got a Lump may be that you can extract more than one bullet point per sentence. 

Another sign you've got a lump is the use of complex-compound sentence structure, or the run-on paragraph -- a paragraph that wanders all around a point (more than 8 lines without dialogue). 
Here's a blog titled The Almighty Paragraph in the acquiring new techniques series.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/05/acquiring-new-techniques-part-2.html

Another way to spot a hidden lump is to scrutinize your dialogue. 

If a character speaks more than two sentences at once while the other character just stands there, you've likely got an expository lump disguised as a lecture.  The best way to fix those is to delete the middle sentence of the dialogue paragraph and re-evaluate whether any of what is left is needed.

Ask yourself, how does this utterance advance the plot, change the situation, and change the way the listening character is thinking?  Good dialogue advances the conflict toward the resolution which is the Ending.  If the dialogue is static, doesn't advance the conflict, then it is likely to be a Lump.

Dialogue where one character tells another something the other character knows is expository lump.  Dialogue where one character tells another what the reader already knows is expository lump best cured by deletion.  In those spots where you have deleted dialogue that was repetition for the reader, you can insert bits of expository lumps that you've broken up using the method below. 

Once you've spotted your expository lumps, dissolve them and anoint the moving parts of your story with the resulting solution. 

Here's how:

1) Ask yourself if the reader absolutely must understand this point in order to comprehend the Ending.

A) if so, clip that sentence or paragraph and save it in a txt file or notation, but get it out of the narrative.

B) if not, delete that material.  Don't worry, if you need it later, you will recreate it at a more appropriate point, or perhaps change it markedly to lead to the ending. Endings morph as you write and rewrite, so likewise info in lumps must morph.

2) Ask yourself if this point made in the expository lump must be understood by the reader at this exact point in the story.

A) if so, ask yourself if there is another way to SHOW DON'T TELL this point. Maybe there's a scene missing, maybe a character, or an offhand line of dialogue. Sometimes a bit of worldbuilding can be restated as a piece of artwork, a vase, a brightly dyed carpet - a bit of visual stimulation that implies underlying technology or trade without explicitly detailing it all.  A Persian Carpet in Fiji implies trade without exposition.

B) if not, put this detail into a file of "Move it to Later" -- sometimes you can copy the bit and paste it at the top of the chapter where it absolutely MUST be known.  When you go through on rewrite, you'll think of a way to show-don't-tell without slowing the pace of the plot.

3) Ask yourself why this point is interesting to yourself.  Maybe this Expository Lump is the real story you are trying to write, and all the rest is just noise?  Yes, every character has a life-story and a history that you, the writer, must know -- but that does not imply that the reader must know it, or must know it now.  Leave some bits over for future novels in the series if it is intrinsically interesting but irrelevant to the Ending of this novel.

A) if this point is more interesting than the story you've written, write the story that goes with that point separately.  It may be a prequel, and you started in the middle of a series (like Star Wars).

B) if this point is inherently boring to you, it will bore the reader, so cut it.  On rewrite, you will fabricate some other back-story point from the theme and plot:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html

The solution that dissolves all expository lumps is "Show Don't Tell" -- which means to illustrate, dramatize, symbolize,
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html
or embody the material in a character who speaks for that philosophy or point of view and throws monkey wrenches into the lives of your main character (i.e. to integrate the lumped material into the plot.)

Every writing course will tell you to show-don't-tell, but I've never found one that shows you how to show rather than tell. 

This Tuesday blog series on writing craft is designed to impart the necessary clues for developing the ability to illustrate, dramatize, symbolize, and transform your creativity into Art that conveys a fresh point of view to your readers. 

The most common reasons for coding material into expository lumps are:

a) it's boring to you, so you just want to get on to your exciting story -- so you TELL instead of SHOWING.

b) it's more interesting to you than the story you think you can sell.

c) you do not have mastery of character-creation via theme which is what makes stories interesting.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/index-to-theme-character-integration.html

4) Ask yourself which makes you more excited -- the story you condensed into a Lump, or the story you are writing? 

A) if the lump is exciting, cut it, paste it into a new file, and write an outline of that story with a beginning, middle, end just as if you were going to write that instead.

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/12/astrology-just-for-writers-part-8-beat.html

B) if the lump is not exciting, copy/paste it into another file, separate it into bulleted list of points it makes, and copy/paste that bulleted list into the "Move it to Later" file.

Once you have your second draft, with all the bits of broken up Lumps sprinkled where they best lubricate the moving parts of your story, go over the "Move it to Later" file and check to see if you left out anything important.  (the editor and copyeditor will still find stuff you have to fix).  Leaving items out is much better than putting in too much.  Make your editor and readers ask questions.

5) Don't despair!!  Once you have done this Lump-Dissolution process a few times, your subconscious will begin to feed you the information the reader needs in the order which the reader will most appreciate it.  And you will be writing the most exciting story of the bunch that come wrapped in boring expository lumps.

In other words, professional writers who can make a living at it do not spend months rewriting.  They write, clean up the second draft, and send it in -- getting on to the next contract they've already signed.

But most people don't begin their careers able to do that.  First comes that proverbial million words for the garbage can.  This Expository Lump method allows you to retrieve those early works from the garbage can, and produce the story you most want to write.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Free Webinar On Monday July 27th "Sell Truckloads Of Books"

I've subscribed to Penny Sansevieri's free and immensely helpful newsletter for at least three years, and often follow the advice. I've also interviewed Penny on my Crazy Tuesday radio show, and can vouch for her generosity with her expert marketing advice for authors.

Now, Joel Friedlander and Penny Sansevieri want to help you to improve your discoverability on Amazon and they assure you this is the best next step to finding more readers!

Their webinar will be taking place on Monday, July 27 at 1:00pm PST.

Log-in information is going out the morning of the webinar - but you can register this weekend!

Join by visiting: http://bit.ly/TruckloadWebinarsignup

Permission granted to share. Penny says, "Please forward this email to your friends and colleagues, because you won't see the same strategies used by anyone else in the business - and there's a reason our clients get better results!"

The webinar will be hosted on GoToWebinar, which will take just a few minutes to launch on your computer, tablet or mobile, so we recommend you start the log-in process at least 5 minutes early so you're not rushed. You can get a heads up on the (super simple) process by visiting GoToWebinar in advance.

Good luck!

Rowena Cherry

The Pluto Formerly Known as a Planet

I've been reading news stories about the Pluto fly-by with excitement over the expansion of the human mind into the vastness of space beyond the conventionally recognized boundary of the Solar System. Pluto (known as Yuggoth, home of eldritch entities, in the Lovecraftian mythos, and discovered to be the outpost of an interstellar invasion in Robert Heinlein's HAVE SPACESUIT, WILL TRAVEL) has geological activity and several moons. When I learned about the Solar System as a child, Pluto was a full-fledged planet of inert, icy rock and had no moon.

A not-uncommon SF trope speculates that the shared beliefs of human minds collectively shape reality. For instance, the Earth was flat until we decided it was round. There were only four elements until chemists decided otherwise.

From an early story on this premise, THE NEW REALITY (1950) by Charles L. Harness:

"And I repeat, the universe is the work of man. I believe that man began his existence in some incredibly simple world-- the original and true noumenon of our present universe. And that over the centuries man expanded his little world into its present vastness and incomprehensible intricacy solely by dint of imagination. . . . Even this brilliant man would probably say that the earth was round in 600 B.C., even as it is today. But I know it was flat then--as truly flat as it is truly round today. What has changed? Not the Thing-in-Itself we call the earth. No, it is the mind of man that has changed. But in his preposterous blindness, he mistakes what is really his own mental quickening for a broadened application of science and more precise methods of investigation--"

Heinlein plays with a similar notion in WALDO (1942):

"Suppose Chaos were king and the order we thought we detected in the world about us a mere phantasm of the imagination; where would that lead us? In that case, Waldo decided, it was entirely possible that a ten-pound weight did fall ten times as fast as a one-pound weight until the day the audacious Galileo decided in his mind that it was not so. Perhaps the whole science of ballistics derived from the convictions of a few firm-minded individuals who had sold the notion to the world. Perhaps the very stars were held firm in their courses by the unvarying faith of the astronomers. Orderly Cosmos, created out of Chaos -- by Mind! The world was flat before geographers decided to think of it otherwise. The world was flat, and the Sun, tub size, rose in the east and set in the west. The stars were little lights, studding a pellucid dome which barely cleared the tallest mountains. Storms were the wrath of gods and had nothing to do with the calculus of air masses."

Along those lines, speaking postmodernly, did the Solar System end at Saturn before more powerful instruments revealed Uranus? Did Pluto exist before the anomalous wobble in Neptune's orbit was discovered? Did the former ninth planet objectively lose its planet status and become a dwarf planet when astronomers decreed it so? In my childhood, was it really a moonless world?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt