Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism (or Zoomorphism)

Sapient animals in fiction and film range all the way from creatures that live and act like their real-life counterparts but communicate with language among themselves, as in BAMBI (the book, not the Disney movie, which anthropomorphizes the characters a bit more) and WATERSHIP DOWN (in which the rabbits have myths and legends as well as speech) to what a friend of mine calls "zoomorphic humans," characters who look like animals but for all intents and purposes are human, as in the Arthur cartoons and the Berenstain Bear series.

TV Tropes has a page exploring this range:

Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism

The creatures in MRS. FRISBY AND THE RATS OF NIMH behave much like "normal" animals and birds, aside from the intelligent rats whose human-like minds are explained by the scientific experiments performed on them. The animals in the Narnia series present a special case, since most of them are natural beasts like the animals in our own world, but the "talking animals," uplifted by Aslan, interact as equals with human characters and sometimes wear clothes and use technology. The animals of the all-animal Redwall world behave like people but retain some of their species traits, especially the conflicts between prey and predators (almost all of whom are portrayed as villains). ZOOTOPIA, set in another world with civilized animals and no human beings, makes a conscientious effort to "show their work" as far as species traits are concerned, including drawing the various types of creatures more or less to scale. And, of course, the fraught relationship between predators and prey is central to the plot. The animated stuffed toys of the Winnie the Pooh series act in most respects like people but with some token nods to their animal natures, such as Owl living in a tree and Rabbit in a burrow. The animals of THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS occupy roughly the same level. They live in a world where none of the human characters seem surprised to meet what C. S. Lewis called "dressed animals." Snoopy in the "Peanuts" series began as fairly doglike and gradually became more anthropomorphic. The Disney cartoons present the odd situation of some "animals" being essentially zoomorphic humans, such as human-sized Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, while others—e.g., Pluto, who's smaller than his master, the "mouse"!—are simply animals. Chip and Dale, the chipmunks, lead a natural tree-rodent lifestyle but seem able to understand and speak the language of the more anthropomorphic characters.

What does an author gain by portraying almost-human characters as animals? In the highly didactic Berenstain Bears stories, the characters' ursine appearance and names probably offer the "spoonful of sugar" needed to make the "medicine" of the lessons go down easily with the target audience. Child readers can enjoy being taught through stories because of the distancing effect of the animal guise (as well as the light, humorous approach to most of the problems). In the GET FUZZY comic strip, the dog and cat behave like unruly children rather than pets, even more so than the comparable characters in GARFIELD (which at least act canine and feline part of the time). The cat, Bucky, is even expected to clean his own litter box. The dog, Satchel, appears to be mentally challenged. Bucky is downright sociopathic in his disregard for the rights and feelings of others, especially Satchel. If these creatures were human children, the family would be in therapy. By drawing them as pets owned by a put-upon bachelor, the cartoonist can pass off the strip as humor. (As you may guess, I find it more unpleasant than funny.) Similarly, classic cartoon characters such as Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny can get away with actions that wouldn't be accepted as funny from human actors, because Donald and Bugs are nominally animals.

C. S. Lewis addresses this question in regard to THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS. He suggests that making the characters animals allows the author to give them the incompatible freedoms of both adults and children. Mole, Rat, and Toad (who's more anthropomorphized than the others) enjoy complete independence, like adults, but they're free to "play" all the time with no need to work for a living, like small children.

When animal characters have any degree of human-like intelligence and personality, they satisfy one of the desires often fulfilled by extraterrestrial aliens—they let us imagine interaction with nonhuman people. As Tolkien says, animals are like foreign countries with which humanity has broken off relations; we yearn to connect with them.

Speaking of animals, happy Groundhog Day (aka Candlemas)!

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Cozy Science Fiction Part 1 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Cozy Science Fiction

Part 1

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

You all know the genre sub-division called Cozy Mystery.  I've been reading a lot of those lately, and enjoying the amateur detective/Romance genre blend. 

Here is a gorgeous example of a Cozy Romantic Mystery series.  

https://smile.amazon.com/Paradise-Valley-Mysteries-Box-Book/dp/B00XLYRBKE/

This is by the justly famous writer, Debra Burroughs.  

And boy are these great novels!  Fabulous series. Highly recommended.

The Paradise Mystery series starts with the lead Character, Emily Parker, facing life after her husband is murdered.  Beset by financial ruin and major trauma, she takes over her late husband's private detective business -- and begins to unfold, unwrap, delve into, and discover layer upon layer of "my world was never what it seemed to be."  She deemed herself "happy" -- and now finds what she thought her life was actually was only a thin, brittle facade.  She becomes a scientist of sorts, insistently researching the truth of the matter of her husband's death (and many other mysteries).  

So this series starts with a life catastrophe of the main character, but the world around her is stable.  The world is not what she thought it was, but it holds still while she figures out what is really going on.

"What is really going on..." is the main theme of the Alien Series by Gini Koch.  I've just finished reading her ALIEN NATION:

https://smile.amazon.com/Alien-Nation-Novels-Gini-Koch/dp/0756411432/

I find these two series, while very different, have a similar feel to them.

In the Paradise Valley Mysteries, the main Character's world has fallen apart leaving a shattered mess of apparently disconnected mysteries preventing her from building a new life.

In Gini Koch's Alien Series, the main Character Kitty finds "love at first sight" practically on the first page of book 1, and that love sucks her into situation after situation that is not what it seems, though the catastrophe she must avert each time is very real, and very destructive.  

Story is always about the point in a life's arc where things go wrong, go badly, go strangely, or just go to pieces.  Take Bilbo Baggins -- nice, stable, safe life until magical adventure comes calling.  Where the conflicting elements meet is where the story and the plot begin.  And sometimes your biggest conflict is with an ally.

So science fiction, often about combat or war, very commonly starts or contains a catastrophe.  

Here is a quote from a website page about Cozy Catastrophe Science Fiction:

http://bestsciencefictionbooks.com/cosy-catastrophe-science-fiction.php

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

What is Cosy Catastrophe Science Fiction?

The Cosy Catastrophe, or Cozy Catastrophe depending on where you learned English, is a narrowly defined sub-genre that was hugely popular in the 1950s and 60s, especially in Britain. The term was first used by Brian Aldiss in Billion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction, describing John Wyndham's books: “The essence of cosy catastrophe is that the hero should have a pretty good time (a girl, free suites at the Savoy, automobiles for the taking) while everyone else is dying off.”

More generally, Cosy Catastrophe features an upheaval that significantly changes the world, usually many many people die, but the event itself is rather short lived and the characters in the story don't dwell on it. The world itself is an everyday sort of world, it's familiar (and therefore “cosy”), it's even sometimes a bit of a retreat—a new life where you get to quit your day job and steal luxury cars. The world may be falling apart, but you can still enjoy a cup of tea and rejoice in the fact that you don't have to deal with your boss on Monday.

- See more at: http://bestsciencefictionbooks.com/cosy-catastrophe-science-fiction.php#sthash.WhtNLdF7.dpuf

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

I cheerfully disagree with Brian Aldiss whose scholarship and fiction writing are impeccably British and unquestionably the foundation of the science fiction field.

I also disliked John Wyndham's novels -- not because they were badly done, but because they do not depict the essential realities of the world that I see.  

My disagreements with the 1940's founders of science fiction are mostly a matter of taste.  I see Aliens as potential Romantic Interest -- and maybe more than just interest.

And so while these great men have established the field of science fiction, and while I grew up reading their work, I see the world as energized by love, and driven toward union and family.  A stable world arises from stable love.  

"Happily Ever After" is one form of stability.  

So I see a market for science fiction where the Characters are fully engaged in their world, as Debra Burroughs and Gini Koch both depict.  Catastrophe may come to a Character's personal life, or to the world they live in, but in every instance the real story happens when the Character dives into the Catastrophe and sets things right again by doing the Impossible, thus changing the definition of Possible.

Where the Characters' actions affect their world, and where love conquers all (not where love retreats from all)  is where Science Fiction, Mystery, and Romance genres come together.

Not all science fiction plots contain a catastrophe - though that is a sub-genre that becomes popular in bleak times - but all science fiction contains a mystery and a voyage of discovery, an adventure outside ordinary life or what the Character has considered to be ordinary even if it is not.  Kitty, Gini Koch's main character, is always greeting the bizarre, unreal, monstrous challenges as "routine."  That is the attitude of the Science Fiction Character -- strange is normal.

This Brian Aldiss definition of Cozy Catastrophe Science Fiction does describe a popular, extant genre.  But here, on Alien Romance, we can explore the Literature of Ideas where the Idea we write about is Love Conquers All and the Idea that Happily Ever After is possible, even perhaps inevitable.

Mystery has always been a sister-genre to science fiction aiming at the same target audience.  Mystery and Science Fiction both appeal to people who love to think, puzzle, analyze, and play games with the writer to see if they can figure out the solution to the question the writer is posing before the Characters do.

In Mystery, it may be "who-dun-it" or maybe "why-dun-it" or a jousting match between detective (professional or amateur) and a criminal (mastermind or less).  Gini Koch does create marvelous Criminal Masterminds! 

In Science Fiction, it may be "how can we do this" or "how did "they" do that?" or "that's impossible -- unless..."

Science is all about mystery - about following clues and unraveling the tangle of Natural Law to make sense of reality.  And Mystery solving uses the scientific method.  

Fiction is all about people -- human or not -- who have problems they regard as formidable.  

The writer's job in fiction is to convince the reader that the Character's problems actually are formidable -- and pose the question, "What would you do in her place?"

In Romance, the question the writer poses is narrower, but because of the narrow focus (this guy or that one? This woman or that one? This spouse or none? Where is the path to happily ever after, behind door one or door two?) the issues Romance deals with are vastly more complicated, more complex, more nebulous and more urgent.  

Mystery, Science Fiction, Westerns, and Fantasy or Paranormal Romance are all "fiction" first.  

To have a story, you must have a Character who is living through events that impact the Character's sense of identity.  As the Character changes Identity to adapt to his/her new reality, the Character is said to "Arc."  Traits mature, but don't change or disappear.  A Nag will continue to Nag -- but about different things.  A Complainer will continue to Complain - but more effectively and efficiently.  

The "genre" label appropriate for any given Character's story depends in large part on the target market - on the group of Readers who buy that story, enjoy it, and look for more like it.  Remember, Hollywood and Publishing are always looking for "the same but different."  That's how genre develops.

Right across all the genres, Mystery, Science Fiction, Westerns, Thrillers, International Intrigue, and Fantasy/Paranormal, we see how the Character's initial idea of their identity changes under the impact of discovering that what they thought was so is in fact not-so. 

This discombobulation, consternation, cognitive dissonance element does not appear in all Best Sellers, or Literature that is not considered "genre."  A lot of people do not find it fun or amusing to be confused or disabused of their certainties.  Science Fiction readers love that feeling - "Oh, was I wrong, or what!"  Or they love to watch other people be astonished.  You see this in the Romance genre, too.  

For example, the "confirmed bachelor" who is convinced Romance is imaginary and he'll never marry is ripe for a "Love At First Sight" experience.  And the woman he "sees" is very likely also self-sufficient and settled into a career that has no place for "him."  The two collide with fireworks.  

As they re-arrange their self-images, they must re-arrange their lives, create a "we" out of "me."  

The thing with Romance is that it deals with Happiness -- or maybe just the pursuit of happiness.  The Romance master theme is "Bonding With Your Soul-Mate Leads To Happily Ever After."  

In the favorite, best selling theme structures of Romance genre you find implicit assumptions that The Soul is real -- that humans are more than animal bodies -- and that "Happiness" has to include some satisfaction on the Soul Level Of Existence as well as physical comfort.  When you leave the Soul Mate element out of the worldbuilding, you end up with soft porn, not Romance.  

One theme is that a woman must have a fulfilling career -- a sequence of positions in life which, when traveled through, produce Soul Satisfaction.  That's a "theme" as we have discussed exhaustively.  

An alternative theme would be that female humans do not have souls.  Or that if they do, being female means careers can not satisfy their souls.  Any anti-feminist statement you find outrageous enough to write about will do for a theme. 

If you're writing Science Fiction Romance, the worldbuilding would then include Aliens who a) have no souls, b)have souls and don't know it, c) have different sorts of souls, d) are reincarnated human souls either rewarded or punished for behavior when human by being reincarnated as this type of Alien.  

"What if ...?" Souls are real?  The reality of Souls is a thematic premise. It can be treated as Paranormal Romance, or nuts and bolts science fiction.

"What if ...?"  Souls are created by God, creates one branch of themes -- and another "Souls are not created by God because there is no God," creates another branch of themes.  

We saw "Souls Exist But Not Created By God" handled very well in The Flicker Men, which I reviewed here. 

 I reviewed this is some depth here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/09/reviews-19-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

THE FLICKER MEN is a brilliant science based presentation of the concept "soul is real,"  a must read for Romance writers - mostly because it is not Romance.

Another way to find a readership to target is to study TV Series that flash to popularity then disappear without being copied.  Usually, several such TV Series will appear and vanish before one genre-bender like Star Trek comes along.  

Watching TV for the presentation of what you might term The Romance Problem (how do you sell the Happily Ever After premise to those who can't accept it?) can be instructive.

I stumbled upon such an odd TV Series on Amazon Prime last year.  Puzzling over why I liked it, I decided it was Cozy Science Fiction (not catastrophic).  

It is about a group of unmarried twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings who have substantial education and careers -- men and women alike, formidable people.  These are the sorts of people who make great Science Fiction heroes.  

Their adventures are "cozy" in that they don't involve space battles, explosions, destruction derbies, or fight-for-your-life situations at the core of their adventures.

Their trying, angst-focusing adventures are into the land of speed dating, coffee dating, dress up dating, or just trying to find someone to date.  At first, they are not looking so much for Romance as they are for someone to marry and settle down with.  

The TV Series is called Srugim, a Hebrew word meaning crochet or knit, the kind of stitching used to make an Israeli yarmulke.  The show is in Hebrew with English subtitles.  

When I was in college, I used to spend a lot of time in the campus theater where they showed foreign films in various languages, often without subtitles.  I loved it.  Today I watch streaming!  

So we in the USA have this foreign made TV Series, aimed at a foreign audience. Can you imagine a richer research environment for the Alien Romance writer?

You've seen the Cozy Mystery burst onto the scene, and decades ago Brian Aldiss defined the Cozy Catastrophe Science Fiction as being about people ignoring a catastrophe around them.  Romance often does that -- vanquishes the real world for a time.  

Maybe it is time for the Cozy Science Fiction genre to blossom, and I think the documented popularity of this TV Series import, Srugim, is indicative of how ripe the USA audience is for this type of show.  Yet, there aren't that many imitators easily found.

Here is an article about this HIT TV SERIES - that just vanished without spawning a genre (yet).

http://forward.com/sisterhood/123571/the-women-of-israels-hit-tv-show-srugim/

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

... Accurate portrayals of Orthodox Jews in American films or on television are hard to come by. Good female characters are especially rare, usually appearing onscreen as either oppressed or unnaturally saintly (see “A Price Above Rubies,” “A Stranger Among Us”.)

But “Srugim” (written and directed by Laizy Shapira, himself an observant Jew) comes with complex female characters who have commitment issues, religious struggles, and romantic baggage (a lot of romantic baggage). Modern Orthodox young, single professionals can finally see themselves on onscreen. Although created by a man, the show is especially good at portraying the female characters’ complicated relationships with their tradition.

In the first episode of the series, Reut, the high-powered accountant, is seen both dumping a suitor who is uncomfortable with her salary and reciting Friday night Kiddush to the amazement of the men at the Shabbat table. While openly feminist, Reut is constantly being drawn to what she sees as a more normative Orthodox lifestyle. When she pretends to be married to another character in order to help him keep his job, she outwardly mocks her “fake homemaker” identity but inwardly is wistful.

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

Do read this article with an eye to how it portrays the life and struggles of a human woman swept away to an Alien Planet, trying to find a stable identity.

Srugim is a TV Series about contemporary human beings in their workaday world, but illustrates just how to create an Alien Romance novel.  Still, it was a surprise "hit" and even bigger surprise that it is popular in the USA, too.  "They," the professional purveyors of entertainment, have no idea what they are dealing with when they touch our field.  

You may still be able to find this TV Series on Amazon Prime:

https://smile.amazon.com/Episode-01-English-Subtitled/dp/B00DTP198A/

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com 

Other People's Faces...and Stuff.

The most interesting copyright-law related blog of the week was penned by Kimberly Buffington of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP.  The cautionary tale concerns a young lady who was photographed without her knowledge or consent while she was eating. A photographer emerged from hiding and asked her to sign a waiver, giving him permission to make use of her likeness, and she refused.

Six years later, the young lady started to see her unmistakable likeness on posters in franchise outlets of that same restaurant. What is more, some posters had been photoshopped to make it look like she was partying with alcohol and other people.

Curious? Follow this link for the skinny.
Link

And in case that did not work for you:
 http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=64d455f5-e1ba-4637-9b95-9235d395232b&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+General+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2017-01-23&utm_term=

I think the young lady has a point. What if her career depended on teetotalism? What if one of the other persons--and any of his apparent acquaintances--turns out to be of interest to the authorities?

Not only does this cautionary tale warn anyone who uses for commercial purposes the photographs they have taken, it also inspires my imagination with at least three stories. Which reminds me of The Rumpelstiltskin Problem by Vivian Vande Velde.  (Google Books cannot find reviews, but there are plenty on GoodReads.com).

It is not quite too late to submit your comments on the qualities and passions you'd like to see in the next Register of Copyrights.

Opine here. https://www.research.net/r/RegisterOfCopyrightsNR

One of the most important points to consider making (perhaps) is that additional weight ought to be given to the unique and thoughtful responses from creative persons who depend on copyright protections of their own work for their livelihood.

Finally, one can no longer rely on glaringly bad spelling and grammar to flag phishing attempts and spoof emails. Beware. This week, I've been bombarded with some clever ones purporting to tell me that I have purchased some very expensive sporting gear celebrating a certain Florida football team named after a large member of the cat family.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

Timeless

As an almost lifelong science fiction reader (mostly "soft" SF, since I'm mainly a fantasy and horror fan), I can't help nitpicking at the new TV series TIMELESS, even though I'm enjoying it. Premise: The antagonist has stolen the prototype time machine (the Mothership) in order to leap around through U.S. history trying to change the past, for reasons that seem justified and vitally important to him. The good guys—a historian (Lucy), a soldier tasked with eliminating the villain by any means available, and the scientist mainly responsible for inventing the time travel device—pursue the thief in the smaller "Lifeboat" and struggle to keep history on track. The writers of the program attempt to take seriously the present-day reverberations of changes in the past, e.g., Lucy returns from the first excursion to discover that her terminally ill mother is fine and was never sick, she had a different father in the new timeline, she's engaged to a man who's a stranger to her, and her sister's existence has been erased. Alterations occur only when it suits the plot, however; the "butterfly effect" of small deviations potentially cascading into huge changes doesn't show up.

Just as series such as GILLIGAN'S ISLAND have the Omnidisciplinary Scientist, an expert in whatever category of science that week's plot requires, TIMELESS has an Omnidisciplinary Historian. Like experts in any other field of study, professors of history specialize. No one historian can know every period in minute detail, not even every period in American history (which seems to be Lucy's specialty). Her familiarity with the events of every date the time machine lands on and the backstory of every historical person they meet strains credibility. It wouldn't take more than an extra minute or two for each episode to show her reading up on whatever span of dates they're about to visit, which would go a long way toward plausible suspension of disbelief. And what's with that huge walk-in closet stocked with any type of clothing the travelers happen to need? When the time machine was built, did the designers PLAN to hop all over the past two or three centuries risking permanent damage to the timeline?

Hardest for me to accept is the scene in last week's episode, when Lucy tries to spook a serial killer in 1893 by revealing knowledge of details of his past that would appear only in an in-depth biography—and the team had no advance reason to suspect they would even meet this guy.

At the beginning of the same episode, Lucy has been kidnapped by the villain and taken to the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. One character laments, as they're preparing to pursue the Mothership, "We're short a historian." Have they forgotten the Internet exists? If Lucy were there, she would probably have to look up the World's Fair to gather information or at least refresh her memory; the other characters could brief themselves the same way.

What really bugs me, though, is how the characters behave with such a sense of urgency in every episode. They have some means of tracking the Mothership. They always know where and when the villain has landed. Yet they act as if catching up with him is a life-or-death rush. Uh—they have a TIME MACHINE. They could research the target date and location for months or years, then transport themselves to the precise place and moment to intercept the villain.

Clearly the writers either haven't thought through the implications of time travel or ignore them in the interests of drama. A glaring example of consequences of the fact that a network science fiction series has to appeal to a general audience, not just the SF-fan subset thereof.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Archetype Integration Part 4 - Marriage and Ownership

Theme-Archetype Integration

Part 4

Marriage and Ownership

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Previous parts in this Theme-Archetype Integration series

Part 1
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/12/theme-archetype-integration-part-1.html

Part 2
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/01/theme-archetype-integration-part-2-how.html

Part 3
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/01/theme-archetype-integration-part-3.html

And previously on Marriage:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/01/if-hea-is-implausible-how-come-it.html

And now Part 4 opening a whole new can of worms, ownership and marriage.

This series on integrating Theme with Archetype was started because of a question posed by a reader of this blog.  Exactly what is an archetype?  What are we really talking about here?

And the answer is complicated because these Tuesday posts are on what goes on inside a writer's mind before the light bulb, "I've got an idea for a story!" flashes on.

This series is about what writers need to know about archetypes in order to use them effectively, and in such a way as to connect with an audience.  And all of this is about the period before the Idea occurs to you.

So "what" an archetype is to you depends in some part on what you intend to do with it and for whom you are doing that.  An archetype is not intellectual property.  The applied and realized archetype - the Characters and their Story - is intellectual property which is owned.

An archetype is a pattern -- like a dress pattern cut out in tissue paper, or a "template" for a web page so that you add your own images and text to a pre-existing design.

In the case of the Archetypes that subsume our shared Reality, the owner of the Archetype is the Creator of the Universe.

We've discussed theme at great length (and will have to discuss it continuously).  The essence of story is conflict that progresses through plot events to a resolution.

What conflicts with what and to what ending -- how those elements relate to each other is where the theme resides.

Theme is a statement about reality, or an inescapable truth, a lesson to be learned because of the plot events that happen to the main character as a result of that main character's character traits.

Theme is the writer's understanding of the nature of life, the universe, and everything as it pertains to the reader's personal problems, joys, triumphs and failures.

What a human being is, and how we related to each other (or to Aliens from some other planet), is all a matter of opinion.  But where did that opinion come from and how do you explain how you arrived at it?

For example, Love Conquers All is our primary theme in the Romance genre.  But how do we know that, despite all the reality based evidence to the contrary?

Plotting a Romance novel is a process of explaining how some Character comes to understand that Love Conquers All, giving the reader a glimpse of that lesson.

Here are some previous posts on Theme.

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/03/soul-mate-characters-heroic-villainous.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/10/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-4.html

So Theme is a statement (or question) derived from the Artist's view of the universe, from the Vision of Reality the Artist sees that others may easily miss.

The Artist's job is to depict that vision in concrete form so that those who can't see it do come to understand it.

The problem is that this Artist's Vision of the Universe is non-verbal, but novels are written in words.

How do we translate gut feelings into words?  What property of Reality allows us to flip a non-verbal conceptualization around and make it come out into a string of 100,000 English words?

How can "words" depict an archetype?  What is an archetype - what is it made of and where does it come from?  A thematic premise is that such universal archetypes are created (and owned) by the Creator of the Universe.  (a theme would be: The Creator of the Universe is not God but Humanity.)

Is the concept of "archetype" something a philosopher just made up so academics could earn a living teaching about it?  Is it something that occurred to a philosopher at the dawn of mass production which uses molds and forms to make many copies of a thing?

Or is the concept "archetype" actually an inherent property of reality that humans just make use of? Maybe it is an "undocumented feature" of the hologram we live inside of?

Sometimes a writer just sits down and tells a story, typing away making words flow because they can see and hear the characters.

But sometimes "inspiration" does not happen and the writer then gives up, saying they have "writer's block."

Here is a post on writer's block:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/six-kinds-of-power-in-relationship.html

Or the writer buckles down like a professional and analyzes the Nature of Reality on its highest abstract level, finding where this novel violated an Archetype's inherent form and thus became a formless mess instead of a depiction of a reality.

For example: one of the major Conflicts in any Romance is "your place or mine?"

The argument may then develop into moving in together, then into "sharing" a bathroom, and your half of the closet vs my 3/4 of the closet (well girls have more clothes!)

We use the word "marriage" when describing a mixture of wines.  You can't take such a mixture apart again.  The different chemicals in the different wines may interact producing another chemical that was not in either one at the start.  How do you assign ownership then?

There are two main, underlying, very abstract, issues behind the process of creating a Marriage out of a Romance.  Without Marriage as the end-game, Romance fritters out and dissipates leading to the "epic breakup."  But "marriage" in this sense is not a piece of paper, but a state of being inextricably mixed.

Here are two posts involving Romance as the state of mind that signifies a melting away of ego-barriers, allowing people to blend into a unit.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/genre-root-of-all-passion-by-jacqueline.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/06/astrology-just-for-writers-part-14.html

Neptune, the planet most symbolizing blending or blurring.  It is the transiting planet that always seems to be involved in Romance.  When that transit is over (can last most of 18 months), there comes the Waking Up Next To A Stranger moment where the "honeymoon is over."  The "honeymoon" state of mind is the trailing edge of the Neptune transit where the Other's flaws and faults just don't count, don't irritate, don't matter because they strike softly with blurred edges.

Remember that in this model of the universe, transiting planets don't "cause" anything.  The solar system is just a giant clock with 9 or 10 "hands" pointing to different parts of the cycle of life.  It is just TIME.  What HAPPENS (plot) at any given TIME is the result of how the Artist in us crafts that moment.

The plot events of real life are not entirely and only Free Will Choice -- since everyone has free will, and most of us exercise that will, and everything that others do or don't do affects everyone to some degree, what you do spreads ripples of effects that intersect others' lives.  What they do about your ripples affects you (eventually).

We act. But we also interact.  And we deal with the consequences of other people's actions.

Think about driving a car -- your quick response, avoiding an accident, saving someone else's bacon and they whiz by without ever knowing how close they came to being wiped out.

You can think of the State Motor Vehicle driver manual as an archetype and the embellishments of the drivers as the manifestation of that archetype.  Each trip, each situation is unique.  The archetype behind it all, the Manual, is always the same.

Driving is a good example.  Every trip you make is your artistic creation, just as every novel you write is your artistic creation.

The car you are driving may be registered in your name -- or your spouse's name.  The errand you are doing may be driving car pool, having your neighbor's kids in the back seat.  The gas in the tank (or charge in the battery) may have been paid for jointly by your spouse and your neighbors, and you are contributing time.

Or the car and its fuel may be owned by your live-in S.O. but the errand (going to work) may be yours.  If you earn money at work, but get there driving a borrowed car, is the money you earn yours or your S.O.'s?

Maybe you pay the apartment rent, and the two of you share the car?  Who buys the groceries?

Money is always primary in conflicts in a Relationship (do your Characters date Dutch?).  Next comes belongings, the possessions each brings to the Relationship.

A kept woman, a Mistress, expects the guy to buy her clothes, at least the expensive ones to wear on fancy dates.  But if a guy buys his Mistress clothes and jewels, who actually owns those objects?

Or take a married couple.  The one who earns more, puts more toward the mortgage, two cars, pet grooming, take-out dinners, and covers medical expenses, surely has more "rights" than the one who barely makes enough to cover child care?  They may work the same number of hours, put equal effort into their work, but bring home very different pay checks.

If the paycheck disparity is too irksome, the third type of argument erupts, a conflict over who has the "right" and who has the "privilege" of space occupied.  The territorial arguments may seem to be over closet space, drawer space, or who gets to park inside the garage.

These conflicts are usually the result of some inequity or dissatisfaction with the deployment of joint resources (money, time, etc).  When people live together, over time they acquire or redefine space and physical objects until they have created "marriage" in fact if not in Vows.

So if you're writing a Romance about a Couple trying to move in with each other, or maybe going from living together to getting married (thus involving merging bank accounts, beneficiaries, liens, torts, liabilities and other legal entanglements), and your novel stalls out on you, you might set that novel aside and forget it, or you might examine where these conflicts come from, and why they are so intense, urgent, life-or-death matters for the Characters.

The writer doesn't have to reveal all to the reader.

Readers already know most of what they want to know about Life, The Universe, and Everything.  Novels are to entertain not to explain.

But also, Readers know a lot more about Life, The Universe, and Everything than they know that they know.

It is the writer's job to know these things consciously, and present them in the story entertainingly.

For most readers, thinking is not entertainment-- well Mystery Genre reading requires an amount of reasoning and remembering, a bit of psychology, but rarely delves into the Nature of Creation. Mystery, like Science Fiction, is more concrete, about the tangible realities of life, not the nebulous theories.

The last thing a reader wants to know about is archetypes.  The first thing a writer facing writer's block and a deadline wants to know about is archetypes.

The Reader shares all archetypes with the Writer.

Archetypes are the feature of reality that allows stories made from words about arguments and adventures of fictional characters to connect with a stranger's emotional reality.

Archetypes are the medium of exchange, the carrier wave, between writer and reader.  This is what we both understand, and what we agree on.

The Reader sees that this Character is "one of those" -- but so different from all other Characters and people in reality that the Reader barely recognizes the similarity.

As Jung said, Archetypes are part of the "collective unconsious" -- that dimension that binds us as one (and maybe binds us as One with all the other sentient species scattered around all the galaxies.

Diagram where each point of light is a Galaxy

Jung invented that collective unconscious concept, right?

Maybe he did, but it has existed for thousands of years - probably in more cultures than I've ever heard of.

The easiest place I know of to learn about the connection between the dimension of reality where the concept "collective unconscious" makes sense and our everyday dimension of reality is the Talmud -- the understanding of the Bible written down from the oral teachings of Moses.

Our Reality, physical reality as described by Pythagoras and Aristotle, and investigated by the addition of the rules of the scientific method propounded by Roger Bacon, is easily within the reach of the human mind.

OK, not everyone is smart enough or smart in the necessary way, to understand astrophysics or genetics -- or computer networking and Artificial Intelligence and self-driving cars.  But humanity as a whole produces people who can conquer these subjects.

Writers have perhaps a bit of this or a bit of that ability, plus an artist's ability to "see" what can not be revealed by physics, math, and chemistry.

The artist sees Reality plus another "dimension" -- it is there, we don't know what it is or why it is there or what it does, nor can we "prove" it is there, but it is there and it affects how things go in human life.  Everyone knows this, even those who don't want to know that they know.

In other words, human Will, decisions, even intentions matter.  Heroism matters.  The Lone Ranger's Code matters.

We talked about the Code of Honor here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/01/theme-archetype-integration-part-3.html

A Code is a moral template.  The Lone Ranger would ride into a situation, perhaps summoned by a silver bullet message, and HELP.  When applied to a Situation, his Code prompted him to HELP, even at risk of life and limb.  So he helped.

The Torah, the first 5 books of the Bible, the story of the life of Moses, is a Code which, when applied to all the various situations of life, down through millennia, prompts certain actions (or inactions).  It is a template, an archetype, a Motor Vehicle driving manual, for how humans must behave in order to get the physical world to behave.  It reveals how the Universe was constructed, and shows how to operate within that Universe.

The Talmud is the collection of real world problems and their solutions as derived from the Oral teachings (how Moses explained what the words of the Torah meant).

One of the most curious features that leaps out at the casual student of the Talmud is how decisions of these ancient Rabbis blended the geometry of the physical world with the thoughts, words and intentions of humans to decide when or if a certain deed was appropriate.

Physical things, space, buildings, fields, roads -- the physical world as we find it and as we craft it -- have attributes that depend on ownership.

One of the key elements in decisions of all sorts is ownership.

Who owns an object (or piece of land; a dwelling), what they do with that object habitually, the right to rent the object or dwelling to another, the right to sell that object or dwelling, can make the difference between a permitted action and a non-permitted action.

Close study of these Rabbinic decisions, the argument driven method of arriving at these decisions, reveals a view of the universe that is fundamentally at odds with our modern secular world view.  At the same time, that ancient world view forms a context where Love Conquers All is a natural law, inescapable consequence of fundamental reality.

A human being's emotions, intentions, habits, contracts, ownership of physical objects, all have vast implications in right vs. wrong.

This is a description of physical reality that portrays human intention as making a difference in how Events proceed.  Love matters.

A physical object (or real estate) is connected to its owner -- the equation is rather difficult, but the connection is real and makes a difference between right and wrong.  This also holds for every business transaction.

Around the world, there are many other such code books of behavior based on other descriptions of Reality.  Study as many as you can.  Never pass up an opportunity to learn.

Here's the useful thing about Torah and Talmud for a writer facing writer's block and a deadline.

Reducing what you've written so far to a Question of right or wrong, can break that writer's block.

This is especially true in resolving the common disputes in Marriage (before or after the Ceremony).

A simple Question of what it means to "own" something, of what is the difference between a "thing" and a "person" and what confers authority, can suggest exactly where this novel must start and end.

Very often writer's block happens because the opening line is badly chosen, leading to a middle from a different book than the ending belongs in.

The three pivot points in a novel, Beginning, Middle, End, have to be a matched set.  The Beginning has to bring the elements that will conflict to generate the plot into contact.  The Middle has to describe the best or the worst consequence of that conflict.  And the End must resolve that Conflict.

Oddly, you see that pattern in most Talmudic arguments -- even arguments between Rabbis of widely separated generations. The arguments illustrate methods of conflict resolution that rely on very specific understanding of the Nature of Reality, of the way ownership imbues items with specific properties - some temporary and some permanent.

If you can pose the plot conflict of your stalled novel as a question of whether you may or may not rent or loan a thing, as a question of rights and how you acquire such rights, then you can reveal where the novel you are writing has to END.

If you know where you "are" in your story-arc, and you suddenly know how it must end, how your reader expects it to end (but fears it won't), then you can figure out what has to happen in between.

The trick here is that the reader knows, unconsciously, how the universe works.  And so do you. Therefore you know how this novel must end, and your Reader knows too.  Just to make sure, though, you should state the theme succinctly and directly at about the 3/4 point of the novel.  The theme will validate the Reader's cultural assumptions about how things work -- ending with Happily For Now, or Happily Ever After.

Our current culture is derivative of a blend of many older cultures -- just as Languages borrow words and concepts, create new words, evolve syntax, etc. and become new and different languages, so too cultures evolve.

The Torah and the Talmud as a pair (especially when combined with Kings, Prophets, Chronicles) form a Template for our modern culture.  These books reveal an Archetype from which modern Western cultures have been created.  Just as you create a specific Character from the Hero Archetype (or The Magician, The Mother, etc), so too our modern Culture is created from a cultural archetype.

Our cultural archetype is based on the Idea that reality as we know it was Created by Words - G-d said, and there was!  Theory is that all that is now is still being created by such Divine Utterances.  All is vibration.

Humans also speak.  What we choose to say, and how we say it, matters.

The Love Conquers All and Love At First Sight/Soulmates themes explicate the older culture described in the Talmud. Get a grip on how that older culture worked, and every novel you write using a Love Conquers All or Soulmates based theme will be easy to write, and will have internal consistency.

And there are a large number of other, older, sources that reveal these older cultural archetypes which, in today's world, are stewed together unrecognizably.

The more widely read you are, the better chance you have of smashing through any writer's block situation that confronts you.

To resolve the age-old marriage disputes of who owns what, reach back to those first principles about the nature of reality on the highest abstract level -- then work your way down to the particular situation your Characters face.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

What Do You Want In A Register?

What do you want in a Register... of Copyrights?

January 31st 2017 is the deadline for copyright owners and future copyright owners to opine.

https://www.research.net/r/RegisterOfCopyrights

It's free, easy, and not terribly time consuming.  Please make your voices heard.

These are the questions in the 3-question survey:

1. What are the knowledge, skills, and abilities that you believe are the most important for the Register of Copyrights?

2. What should be the top three priorities for the Register of Copyrights?

3. Are there other factors that should be considered?

Optional: you may upload supporting material as a file.

That's it!

FWIW, the "Register" is a person. The position was vacated when Maria Pallante was constructively demoted. Rumor has it, Maria Pallante was too sympathetic to copyright owners, musicians, songwriters, authors of books, creators of movies and tv shows that are delivered through cable and satellite channels.

Probably, people who depend on legal sales, contracts, subscription fees, licensing and royalties for their books, movies, sound-tracks, music etc would like a copyright enthusiast in the Register's office.

Perhaps, authors and other creators would like a Register who has a history of representing or supporting copyright owners, and who is clearly supported by copyright owners, rather than one supported by pirates, copyright infringers, "permissionless innovators", or the sort of persons who tell us that "information wants to be free" and include in-copyright fiction and musical works as "information".

Some management experience would be helpful. It would also be good if they were articulate and personable, and able to testify effectively to Congress.

It would be truly remarkable and lovely if those studying the survey comments would give more weight to the replies of persons whose livelihood is affected by copyright ownership than to freeloaders and enterprises who advertise to freeloaders.

In other copyright related news, kudos to the UK and to ISPs in the UK.
http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/watch-pirate-tv-online-you-12463944

Copyright infringers who use Torrents and software to illegally download music, ebooks, films, sports etc will be receiving letters from their broadband providers, explaining to them that what they are doing is illegal, and recommending legal places to find what they want.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

Alien Holidays

Cultures in the non-tropical regions of our planet typically celebrate seasonal holidays such as lights, fire, evergreens, and feasting at the winter solstice; harvest festivals and tributes to the dead in the fall; rituals welcoming spring, e.g., Easter and May Day (as well as advance preparations for the return of spring, such as Carnival and Lent); etc. Heather Rose Jones's Alpennia series takes place in an imaginary country in a version of our Europe. In addition to familiar holidays, the capital city marks the changing of seasons by measuring when the river rises to a certain level. What kinds of holidays might be celebrated on worlds that don't have seasons like ours at all? Come to think of it, why do the Fraggles in the animated series FRAGGLE ROCK have a midwinter festival of bells? They live in a giant cavern complex, where the climate should stay uniform all year round, and they don't have a view of sun, moon, or stars to mark the cycle of the year. (Yeah, I know, because the writers wanted a sort-of Christmas episode, and I loved it, but in-universe the episode lacks logic.)

On a planet where the main division of the year's climate falls between wet and dry, the onset of the rainy season—the time of fertility—might be an occasion for a major holiday. On Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover, which has four moons, some festivals coincide with the appearance of all four moons in the sky. Earth cultures mark months and weeks by phases of the moon, and some cultures follow a lunar rather than a solar year. How would the calendar of a world with no moon look? Without weeks in our sense, what method would societies use to set aside days of rest? Or consider a world like the planet in Isaac Asimov's classic story "Nightfall," with several suns. On that world, total darkness occurs only at intervals of over a millennium. With no memory of night and stars except in mythology, people go mad from the unprecedented sight, and civilization collapses at every "nightfall." But suppose darkness happened rarely but not all that rarely, say roughly once a year. The peoples of that world might have holidays to get them through that frightening occurrence, just as ancient cultures on Earth held rituals and celebrations to ensure that the sun would return on the winter solstice. Other kinds of worlds might have holidays centered on the periodic eruption of a geyser, the migration of important species of animals, or the blooming of a special tree. In our own culture we have celebrations such as the Cherry Blossom Festival and (in my home city in Virginia) the spring Azalea Festival. Capistrano honors the return of the swallows.

The STEVEN UNIVERSE animated series (Cartoon Network) takes place in an alternate world similar to ours but with divergences in history and geography caused by the Gem War (an alien invasion) thousands of years in the past. The characters live in Beach City in the state of Delmarva, for instance. According to the show's creator, this world has no Christmas. We've seen that there's no Halloween. (From these clues, we must assume no Christianity and therefore no Easter either.) Apparently they also don't have Thanksgiving. Other than local town celebrations, we don't yet know what holidays they do celebrate. Because they live in a temperate zone with changing seasons, though, we have to expect them to observe some holidays analogous to the ones we know.

Terry Pratchett's HOGFATHER takes place at the season of Hogswatch, Discworld's analog of Christmas. At the winter solstice the Hogfather brings toys to good children in a sleigh pulled by giant boars. People leave sausages instead of cookies for him, in keeping with the origin of Yuletide as a all-out orgy of feasting before the privations of winter. At the climax of the novel, Susan, Death's part-human granddaughter (it's complicated), has to save the original Hogfather, the primal being on whom the myth is based, from permanent annihilation. Death tells Susan that if she had failed, the sun would not have risen. When she asks what would have happened instead, he says, "A mere ball of flaming gas would have illuminated the world." It's also Death who tells us, in the same scene, "Humans need fantasy to be human."

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Archetype Integration Part 3 - Showing Character Without Telling

Clayton Moore - The Lone Ranger

Theme-Archetype Integration Part 3 - Showing Character Without Telling

Previous parts in this theme-Archetype Integration series

Part 1
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/12/theme-archetype-integration-part-1.html

Part 2
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/01/theme-archetype-integration-part-2-how.html

And now part 3 - about how to convince readers (especially editors) that your novel is about "strong characters." 

We've discussed the requirement for "strong characters" previously, in some detail.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/index-to-theme-character-integration.html

In summation, a fictional character is considered "strong" not because he has muscles or is stupid enough to run into danger instead of away from it -- but because he or she has the will to adhere to the "values" or a code of ethics. 

Juvenile fiction is about "building character" -- character is not a trait humans are born with (though Aliens might be).  It is an acquired trait -- but not one that can be 'taught' as in a course in school.

In trying to define "strong character" we have to consider "gender" and "gender roles."  There was a recent article titled WHY TV NEEDS 'WEAK FEMALE CHARACTERS' in

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

Put another way, what distinguishes this run of TV tragicomedies isn’t their heroines’ unlikeability, but rather, their vulnerability, that is, the frankness with which they disclose feelings and experiences women have long been encouraged to suppress. It is no coincidence that so many of the programs mentioned make deliberate (and much-derided) use of nudity. Like the shots of unmade-up faces that fill Transparent’s third season premiere, the images of Hannah Horvarth sans culottes are a sign not of the shows’ prurience, but of their politics: their insistence on giving women the license, and space, to be exposed. In contrast to the “strong female characters” that have dominated popular culture in recent decades—and that, as Carina Chocano argued in The New York Times, are often distinguished by their lack of gendered behavior—these comparably “weak” characters undermine the conflation of complexity with an implicitly masculine code of values. Too often, to be “strong,” in Chocano’s phrase, is to be “tough, cold, terse, taciturn, and prone to not saying goodbye when they hang up the phone.” Instead, these shows take the bold step of assigning to their lead characters some of the most disparaged of “female” traits.

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

Read the whole article at:

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/12/why-tv-needs-weak-female-characters/509192/

There are a lot of thoughts there about current tastes in female characters characterization, particularly the popularization of the female face with makeup smeared and dripping with tears.
Strength of Character comes through "growing pains" -- the school of hard knocks -- from failing and getting your comeuppance, from being excruciatingly embarrassed, from doing things you are ashamed of later (often much later) because you finally see why that deed was 'wrong.'

There was a 1968 TV Series IT TAKES A THIEF  (the fictional one, not the reality series)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Takes_a_Thief_(1968_TV_series)

And more recently, the TV Series White Collar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Collar_(TV_series)

Regency Romance has thousands of examples of honorable crooks -- outlaws who adhere to a strict Code of Honor.

The contents of that Code of Honor -- or the Honor Among Thieves -- is largely irrelevant to determining whether a Character is "strong" or not.

The strength of a character is measured by how much pain, suffering, loss, expense, and pure grief the character will suffer in order to avoid violating his/her OWN code of honor, sense of ethics, and values.

The Lone Ranger's Creed is a prime example we've discussed. 

https://myfavoritewesterns.com/category/the-lone-ranger-creed/

And here are blogs where we've examined this aspect of Character creation.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/11/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/theme-plot-integration-part-13-superman.html

Does your main character have a Creed?  Ideals that he/she lives by? 

Now think again.  Once you thrust a "creed" or Ten Commandments up front at the reader, the expectation is that the plot will test the Character, usually to destruction.  The expectation is that this novel is about forcing this "strong" character to BREAK his Oath, his Creed, his Beliefs, to violate the core around which the Character is built.

And that is, indeed good plotting.  It is true in life that whenever we say, "I would never ..." some time later we find ourselves doing exactly that.

So if you create a Strong Character, then right up front tell rather than show that the character has a STRICT CREED by which he lives, you are telegraphing to the reader that this book is about destroying a Good Character to reveal that all "good" people are really rotten at the core.

That's a theme: "No human is really Good."  But if you state that on page 1, the expectation is that the novel is about that singular oddity - a Good Human who is really Good, who is actually a Strong Character.

Rotten core means the Character is not strong on the inside -- though might have a brittle facade.  Such a character is not a Hero.  Such a character might not be a Villain, but he is not hero material (until or unless the rotten core is revealed, cleaned out, and rebuilt).

Life comes in sections or epochs -- lives have a shape, child, teen, college age, marriage age, (re-marriage age!), parenting age, retiring age, old age.  Each stage of life has its own business, its own lessons to be internalized.  Some of those lessons build the core stronger, some erode the strength.

By creating your character's biography, not at random, not choosing "interesting" things that happened to the character, but rather by "filling in" (as with a coloring book, or sewing a dress), the details from an Archetype, you can show rather than tell what kind of person your character is.

Hero and Villain are archetypes.  The Lone Ranger is built from the Hero archetype, given only one other trait, (being last survivor, keeping that secret).  The "last survivor" trait is a show-don't-tell illustration of the basic Hero Archetype.

Captain Picard of the Starship Enterprise made that point a few times -- the Captain of a ship far from home port, the final decision maker, must maintain a social and emotional distance from the Crew while at the same time being open, approachable and friendly.

The Hero who has a partner, a sidekick, a bosom buddy, makes the best kind of lead character for a novel, especially a Romance novel.

The love interest might be the sidekick or use the sidekick as access to the Hero.

Think about the TV Series Zoro. (not the recent movies, the very old TV Series)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorro_(1957_TV_series)

Now consider how many remakes, rewrites, renewals, that series had.  Wouldn't you like your Science Fiction Romance series to get that kind of longevity?

Now think about Superman -- and eventually the TV Series Lois and Clark:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois_&_Clark:_The_New_Adventures_of_Superman

The Lone Ranger never got a love interest (neither did the Cisco Kid (also of early TV fame)).  But we knew both of these Hero Characters by the Creed they lived by -- never articulated on air, but rather woven deep inside the plots. 

So, if you are going to write a "weak" character, you tell the reader right up front, what this character (pridefully) refuses to do, or definitively insists on doing.

If you are going to write a "strong" character, you show the reader right up front, how the character (unconsciously, and without actually intending or exerting any effort of will) simply adheres to his personal code of ethics, his/her values and creed.

How do you do that?  What do you choose to include in a first page of a novel to indicate what kind of a person this Character is?

We have discussed how the opening lines of a story or novel delineate the first meeting of the Lead Character (the one whose story you are telling) with the opposing force that will be overcome on the final page.

That is the Conflict -- Lead Character vs. Opposing Force

The Middle is where the Lead Character is defeated and vanquished by the Opposing Force.

The Ending is where the Lead Character vanquishes the Opposing Force.

The Hero wins by Strength of Character followed by Strength of mind/body/will. 

The Villain loses for lack of Strength of Character - no matter how much strength of mind/body/will the Villain may have.  Physical strength, cunning, wealth, power -- none of these can stand against Strength of Character.

So if Hero and Villain have the same strength of mind/body/will and the same Strength of Character -- then you have a conflict between their respective Creeds -- their values, ethics, morals. 

That sort of Plot Conflict using the content of Creed is a setup for the perfect Love Triangle novel.

The Main Viewpoint Character is the one who must choose a mate.  One man and two women -- or one woman and two men (or variants on this pattern). 

You might open where the two men of the triangle are interacting, and the woman sees this. 

The Hero says something most readers in your target readership would find neutral or innocuous, and the Villain retorts, "That is offensive!"  The verbal combat goes on, and the Villain uses some sort of Power (financial, social, perhaps the threat job loss or disgrace) to force the Hero to apologize. 

Within this exchange, you can code a large amount of worldbuilding detail, sketch the relationship among the three, and their life stories, current status and relationships, etc. But the scene focus is sharp on the issue of taking offense and counter-attacking the offender. 

It should seem to the reader that the objection to the offending utterance is rational, reasonable, and righteous.  Of course that statement was utterly offensive, so naturally any Good Man would take offense and obtain an apology -- either knowing or not-knowing the Woman is watching.

A modern twist of this Situation would be if a friend of the Woman in Question is recording a video of the exchange to send to the Woman in Question (as proof of the Character or lack thereof, illustrated by each man's behavior.)

For an Alien Romance, the Woman In Question might be the Alien sent to judge humanity, perhaps for entry into the Galactic Civilization -- or maybe for worthiness of being defended against some Galactic Invading armada bent on taking over this whole planet.

The plot problem in the opening conflict is very much the same as in a Detective Mystery, where a Colombo Character has to tell the guilty from the innocent. Which is the Good Guy and which is the Bad Guy?  Which will the Woman In Question choose to marry?  The one who offends?  Or the one who takes offense?  Strong Characters never take offense.  Though they may form a low opinion of the offending person, Strong Characters will not let their opinion show.  It is not in the Creed. 

Guilt is the feeling driving characters who know they have violated their own creed.

Innocence is the feeling of those who know they have not violated their own creed.

Offense is the feeling telegraphed by Characters who are convinced their own Creed is the only acceptable Creed, and all humans must be forced to obey that one Creed. 

The difference between a Hero and a Villain is in how and when they will use Force to make others behave.

In other words, the difference between hero and villain is inside the content of their Creed.

A Hero is never offended by what others say or do, because he/she is secure in the knowledge that they have followed their own Creed well enough.  A Hero can be put into a physically (or socially, or economically) humiliating position and still be cloaked in dignity. 

A Villain is easily offended by what others say and do because he/she needs the behavior of others to conform to his/her Creed in order to feel secure in the virtue of that Creed.

In other words, Villains evolve to villainous behavior because of the content of their Creed.  Not all humans with a Creed of dubious content will become Villains (in fact, few do).  But would Aliens trying to evaluate us know that?

As a Romance writer, you can take a valiant Hero adhering to a Virtuous Creed and break him, break the Character, make them violate their Creed. 

One famous series that does that, with an admirable expertise in human psychology, is Laurel K. Hamilton's Anita Blake Series (Vampire Romance -- gorgeous work, especially the intricate worldbuilding).

Anita Blake starts out with searing Pride in her Creed -- things she WILL NOT DO -- which, novel by novel, she actually does, hates herself for, gets used to, accepts, and rebuilds her character around new, situationally appropriate, Values.  But as her character grows and strengthens, it is no longer founded on her over-weaning pride.  She regards her younger self as innocent, naive.

The pride exhibited in Book I
https://www.amazon.com/Guilty-Pleasures-Anita-Vampire-Hunter/dp/051513449X/
telegraphs the character-arc to come -- the Creed she lives by may be good, but she will not be able to maintain her integrity.

And she does not.  And she suffers the consequences.  Really suffers.

When it all settles, she is not a Strong Character, but she is not a Villain either.  She's just "one of us" -- an ordinary person coping haphazardly and expediently with impossible situations.

Well, her impossible situations include Vampire politics, shape-shifters, accidental acquisition of power over others, deep involvement with professional hit man, ruining the life and career of a very nice, mild mannered High School teacher, and so on.

The series is the story of a Character whose Creed is honorable, but whose grip on that Creed is shattered.  She can't live by it, anymore and comes to regard the Creed itself as naive.

So what appeared to be the theme at the beginning of the series is revealed to be a red herring.  The actual theme of the series might be stated, "Humans can't adhere to a Righteous Creed."  But how could a human born with the Power to raise the dead adhere to a Righteous Creed?  Isn't that a naive idea? 

So this (very popular) series is an example of how all Weak Characters are not Villains.  Anita Blake is no Villain -- but she's no Hero, either.  She's a Survivor -- and that may be an Archetype, too, one related to the Lone Ranger.

In the Anita Blake series, we see a Character who articulates her Creed right up front, so you know she will break it.

In the Lone Ranger (old Radio or B&W TV version) we see a Character who lives a Creed without any real pride in that fact.  He has a Creed.  He lives that Creed.

The whole pursuit of the Cavendish Gang is not revenge, but simple justice and responsibility, simply Being Prepared, physically, mentally, and morally to fight when necessary for that which is right.  He never says that in so many words.  He just does it -- and very likely does not know he does it.  It is simply right.

Anita Blake knows her Creed and takes inordinate pride in forcing herself to behave according to her creed, head high,  -- in spite of yearning to do otherwise.

The Lone Ranger doesn't know his Creed, but does not yearn to do otherwise.

Anita Blake is not a Villain -- but she is the material out of which Villains are made.

The Lone Ranger is a Hero, pure and simple.

One is a Fantasy Character -- the other Reality. 

Which is which, and why?  Answer that and you will have a dynamite theme for an Alien Romance Series.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Here Be... Cookies, To Turn A Phrase, and Ivanka Trump

Periodic reminder:
European law requires us (the authors of this blog) to remind European visitors that Google, host of Blogger, places cookies on the devices of all visitors. We (the authors) have no control over the cookies that Blogger/Google places on your devices, and if you visit this blog, we assume that you consent to the cookies.

Talking of European cookie law:
The law firm Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP recently wrote about European proposed e-privacy rules that may be adopted early in 2018.
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=27f712c9-a547-4253-8a9e-566518dbfe29&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+General+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2017-01-13&utm_term=

Honestly, I do not believe that the authors of this blog have any access at all to visitors' data, email addresses or anything else (unless you leave a comment, and mostly, you don't).  There does seem to be a visitor counter at the very bottom of the blog page, and according to the above referenced law firm, visitor counters do not require the consent of visitors.

On "60 Ways..." not to leave your lover but "To Turn A Phrase":
In an interesting article about how he advises clients on creating unique and memorable trademarks, Nexsen Pruett refers to "Figures of Speech or 60 Ways to Turn a Phrase" by Arthur Quinn.
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=a95e16c3-9634-4602-929a-982ac0f267a8&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+General+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2017-01-13&utm_term=

Read Nexsen Pruett's blog if you are thinking of getting a trademark (mine is Space Snark and I did not take this expert's advice).  I'm thinking of buying the late Arthur Quinn's paperback.  However, it is short and expensive, and Google Books helpfully reveals quite a lot of the content (very interesting content on use of misspelled words),  Pages 12-24 consecutively and in full, for instance.
https://books.google.com/books/about/Figures_of_Speech.html?id=jjfAJwB6FoUC

And a search of "And" reveals "To And or Not To And" pages 1 to 9 inclusive. It's a mystery to me how Authors Guild lost that lawsuit, and this is totally lawful.
https://books.google.com/books?id=XFLFiE2kn1QC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Last but not least,
I bought an Ivanka Trump dress last week. It was marked down at T J Maxx, and was well made, flattering, and a modest length. I cannot say the same about the length, of a Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP law firm's article about artists piling on Ivanka Trump because their artwork shows on her home's walls in the background of her selfies.
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0a40e7d1-2a79-4216-b364-505f79e9d2fa&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+General+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2017-01-11&utm_term=

If the late Prince and his music publishers could not prevail in the Dancing Baby case for his music playing in the background of a home movie, it's even more likely to be fair use for whatever one has permanently displayed on ones walls to be in the background of personal photographs.

It might be a different matter if the lady were taking high quality photos of just the artwork and selling prints, but she is not doing that.

The legal blogger (Ms Pillsbury) makes excellent points about Fair Use as regards background images in non-commercial social media type posts on Instagram.

Authors might extrapolate something to consider before taking photographs to promote their own books if there are prominent and clear images of more famous authors' works in the background. It's not cool to use--or tag-- another author's name (without permission) to promote oneself.

All the best,
Rowena Cherry

Trapped in Virtual Reality

Numerous works of fiction use the premise of a character stuck inside a game (including a few holodeck episodes in the various STAR TREK series). If you enjoy that kind of thing, try the Japanese "light novels" (a generic label based mainly on books' length, not the "light" or "dark" tone of their stories) in the "Sword Art Online" series by Reki Kawahara. In the first sub-series, the protagonist, Kirito, one of the beta testers for a cutting-edge virtual reality game, gets trapped inside the game world along with hundreds of other players who log in on release day. The game designer has fixed it so that nobody can log out, and anyone who dies in the game dies for real because of the way the creator covertly rigged the brain-machine interface. Thanks to Kirito's experience as a beta tester, he becomes one of the survivors. The main appeal of this story lies in his Intimate Adventure journey from his original stance as a self-reliant loner to friendship with a fellow player, Asuna, and ultimately to deep mutual love with her. The game, Sword Art Online, feels like a three-dimensional, physical experience in most ways but with many game-based factors. For instance, getting injured drains points but doesn't cause true pain. So, despite the total immersion effect, because of details such as this the players have no trouble remaining aware that they're playing a game.

The latest sub-series, which I'm reading now, introduces Kirito to a new VR system that's far advanced over Sword Art Online. The new game, still in the testing phase, simulates the physical world in such extreme detail that the environment can't be distinguished from reality. When Kirito inexplicably wakes up in this environment with no memory of how he got there (no awareness of returning to the test facility, logging in, etc.), he feels hunger, thirst, fatigue, and pain as if in his real body. The only way he can confirm his guess that he's inside a hitherto unexplored version of the game is by opening status windows for objects in the environment. To the people he meets, these windows are simply a form of magic, "sacred arts."

If such a virtual world existed, simulating the primary world in the finest details, how could you know (unless you could access game features such as status windows) whether you were in a real environment or a fictive one? Would there be any way to prove either hypothesis? Furthermore, if you experienced all the effects of living in normal reality, would it make any difference whether you were or weren't?

This scenario brings to mind the problem of solipsism, the one view of the universe that's impossible to refute. If I believe all people and objects I observe are figments of my imagination, how could you refute that belief? The fact that things I can't control and/or don't enjoy happen around me doesn't provide a valid counter-argument, because uncontrollable and unpleasant events often happen in dreams, too. The solipsist hypothesis is completely untestable. Robert Heinlein seems fascinated with this world-view. One of his classic works has a protagonist who (thanks to time travel) is all the characters in the story, including his/her own father and mother. It ends with the chilling sentence, "I know where I came from, but where did all you zombies come from?" I've read a short story (can't recall author or title) set on an interstellar spaceship, in which one character begins to doubt that his memories of Earth are real. Maybe he and his crew mates have always been on the ship? He deteriorates from doubting the reality of Earth to believing that the other people on the ship cease to exist when not in his immediate presence. In THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, Alice ponders whether the sleeping Red King is a character in her dream or she's a character in his.

If "All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream" (Poe), how would we know that? If we live within a perfect three-dimensional, multi-sensory simulation, we can't confirm or refute that possibility unless we can somehow get outside the simulation. As I read in some philosophy course long ago, "A difference that makes no difference is no difference." So it makes sense to operate on the working hypothesis that the universe and all its inhabitants actually exist.

By the way, I've written one "trapped inside a game" story, which appears in the collection DAME ONYX TREASURES, here:

Dame Onyx Treasures

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt