In life, "you never get a second chance to make a first impression". In fiction, your principal males do.... but only if they are interesting to begin with.
"I don't like that man. I must get to know him better."
~Abraham Lincoln
I watched "Frost and Nixon" yesterday and found it quite riveting. "Cheeseburgers" was the sentence that changed my mind about the Frost character.
"I don't fleece my relatives," changed my mind about a bad boy hero in one Regency romance. He'd been established as deadly in duels, he drank too much, he was a hazard to other road-users, and he enjoyed the usual masculine vices of his time. However, he did have a personal code of honor.
Are there snatches of dialogue that have given you an epiphany about a character? Does there have to be a spoken turning point for every good protagonist?
Moreover, do readers and writers still have double standards? Do heroines get second chances? If we don't like the principal female in a novel, do we persevere in the hopes of getting to know her better?
I think not.
PS.
I'm doing NaNoWriMo, so I'm not supposed to agonize over and polish my latest alien romance too much... if at all. For now, the first indication that my hero might be redeemable is when he tells the heroine, (after she has thoroughly and dramatically foiled him),
"I wasn't looking forward to ravishing you."
Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Open Universes
The Japanese manga and anime industry is much more tolerant of derivative, fan-produced work than most American writers and producers are. (I don’t know the reason for this cultural difference.) In fact, many Japanese commercial graphic artists have come into the professional field from fandom, and it’s not uncommon for a professional to continue producing “fan” type work. Fan-produced manga is called “doujinshi.” THE OTAKU ENCYCLOPEDIA says “most professional manga artists respect this activity as the creative right of fans.” Quite a relaxed attitude toward copyright compared to what Western fandom lives with! There’s an annual doujinshi convention in Tokyo, Comiket, which draws over half a million people per year. The mind boggles.
In an interview in THE OTAKU ENCYCLOPEDIA, one of the organizers of Comiket is asked what makes a good doujinshi. He says, “Doujinshi are best when the original works are not too perfect and there are still things to say and explore” (p. 48). An interesting assessment. I wouldn’t necessarily call the source works “not too perfect,” although that description does apply to many of them (fan authors are often motivated by a drive to “fix” source material such as the last season of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST or the final episode of FOREVER KNIGHT). The second part of the sentence, however, sounds just right to me. I’d call it a question of “open” versus “closed.”
Some works of fiction are highly resistant to fanfic. THE VAMPIRE TAPESTRY, by Suzy McKee Charnas, for instance (even if she allowed fanfic, which she doesn’t). Just for fun, not for distribution, I once wrote a story in which one of my vampire characters met her vampire, Dr. Weyland. That tale was pure self-indulgence on my part, and its main purpose was to explore how my character would react. There’s nothing in the closed plot of THE VAMPIRE TAPESTRY that invites such exploration. On the other hand, one of the other great twentieth-century vampires, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s Count Saint-Germain, would provide limitless scope for fanfic because of his millennia-long life during which he interacts with countless people in a variety of historical periods and cultures. (Yarbro also forbids derivative fiction, though.) The most fruitful fields for expansion by fans are found in works and series that create entire universes—e.g., STAR TREK, STAR WARS, J. K. Rowling’s magical Britain, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover, Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar, S. M. Stirling’s alternate-present DIES THE FIRE and its sequels, or Jacqueline’s Sime-Gen series. Worlds such as these leave plenty of open space for fans to insert characters and incidents. There’s even a STAR TREK group, headquartered at Starship Farragut, that films its own videos in a ST spinoff containing no characters from the commercial works. In imaginary universes such as these, there always remain “things to say and explore.”
Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt
In an interview in THE OTAKU ENCYCLOPEDIA, one of the organizers of Comiket is asked what makes a good doujinshi. He says, “Doujinshi are best when the original works are not too perfect and there are still things to say and explore” (p. 48). An interesting assessment. I wouldn’t necessarily call the source works “not too perfect,” although that description does apply to many of them (fan authors are often motivated by a drive to “fix” source material such as the last season of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST or the final episode of FOREVER KNIGHT). The second part of the sentence, however, sounds just right to me. I’d call it a question of “open” versus “closed.”
Some works of fiction are highly resistant to fanfic. THE VAMPIRE TAPESTRY, by Suzy McKee Charnas, for instance (even if she allowed fanfic, which she doesn’t). Just for fun, not for distribution, I once wrote a story in which one of my vampire characters met her vampire, Dr. Weyland. That tale was pure self-indulgence on my part, and its main purpose was to explore how my character would react. There’s nothing in the closed plot of THE VAMPIRE TAPESTRY that invites such exploration. On the other hand, one of the other great twentieth-century vampires, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s Count Saint-Germain, would provide limitless scope for fanfic because of his millennia-long life during which he interacts with countless people in a variety of historical periods and cultures. (Yarbro also forbids derivative fiction, though.) The most fruitful fields for expansion by fans are found in works and series that create entire universes—e.g., STAR TREK, STAR WARS, J. K. Rowling’s magical Britain, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover, Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar, S. M. Stirling’s alternate-present DIES THE FIRE and its sequels, or Jacqueline’s Sime-Gen series. Worlds such as these leave plenty of open space for fans to insert characters and incidents. There’s even a STAR TREK group, headquartered at Starship Farragut, that films its own videos in a ST spinoff containing no characters from the commercial works. In imaginary universes such as these, there always remain “things to say and explore.”
Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Astrology Just For Writers Part 6: Targeting a Readership Part 3
I reviewed an Astrology book, ASTROLOGY A COSMIC SCIENCE, on Amazon which just turned up (with my review) on a Dating Website (Dating?!!! hmmm. Had to read that.)
http://awardwinningdatingsites.com/320/astrology-a-cosmic-science/comment-page-1/#respond
Astrology A Cosmic Science is very old and the author, Isabelle Hickey, is now gone, alas, but this book came back into print recently.
It was written around the time Pluto was just discovered and Astrologers were trying to figure it out.
http://www.amazon.com/Astrology-Science-Isabel-M-Hickey/dp/0916360520/rereadablebooksr/
I had written about the book on Amazon:
------------------------
Strewn With Hidden Gems Of Wisdom
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
The strength of this book is the deep, rich context surrounding each topic. But for many, that would be its weakness.
I use it as a reference book – when I’m stumped by a chart, I just page through this book looking for new associations to break the logjam in my mind. But in truth, this is a book to read cover-to-cover, pasting in post-it-notes to mark the bits and pieces of unrelated but illuminating wisdom tossed into various discussions.
For example, in one very illuminating section of this book, Hickey discusses each of the signs as it manifests as the Ascendant – then under each sign as the Ascendant, she discusses each of the signs that would be on the other House Cusps if there are no interceptions, or if you use equal-house methods.
She shows you how the rising sign synthesizes with the signs on each of the cusps – to create some of the characteristics of people with that sign rising, and to color the house involved. This explains WHY a particular ascendant tends to produce people who behave a particular way.
The book is worth its price for that section alone — if you’re willing to just sit for a couple of hours and read all the rising signs, one section after the other. The faster you read it, the more sense it makes. The section is laid out very systematically, and that system reveals vistas of astrological truths in and of itself.
However, at random throughout the section, a few sentences, “throw away dialog,” and offhand allusions are tossed into other topics to point you to bits of knowledge about how astrology works and what it’s actually for. These bits are not taken up anywhere else in the book, not assembled, not set into a larger context, and not indexed. They just leap out at you as if outlined in soul-fire.
For example: In the section devoted to Capricorn Rising, which puts Libra on the 10th, Hickey says, “Venus’s sign in Saturn’s house is often loving for the sake of expediency. This is not true of the more evolved individual. Students often ask the question, “How can one tell the evolvement of an individual in the chart?” Character is shown by the signs in which the planets are placed. Planets in their sign of exaltation and in the signs they rule are indications of an evolved consciousness. Also the higher-octave planets — Neptune, Uranus, Pluto, and Jupiter — in the first, fourth, seventh, or tenth house show that the individual has had much soul experience in other lifetimes”.
You see? For that alone, this is worth the cover price, and there are lots and lots of those throughout the whole book.
Maybe these bits of wisdom aren’t actually true. But as you go, “Aha!” and pull out a dozen charts of people you know well to check out Hickey’s theory, you learn vast amounts more about astrology than you ever would have without investigating that theory.
I came to amazon today looking for links to used copies of Hickey’s book and was delighted to find it in print. I had been paging through this book at random the other day and it gave me a flash of inspiration. I used that insight to write two columns for my sf/f review column called ReReadable Books. Hickey had connected several sf novels for me, using the 7th House, the 6 of Swords and how they generate the art of storycraft. I’m a professional sf author, and teach writing online, and I needed to write a handout for the Writing Workshop at the World Science Fiction Convention. Before I leafed through Hickey’s book, I had no clue in my mind what I could offer at that Workshop. Then I produced a 14 page essay which will probably be the October and November installments of my column.
So, the strength of this book lies in the context surrounding the facts, a context which assembles random bits of the universe in which you live into a pattern that makes sense. But that context material is so randomly placed – so “stream of consciousness” in the style of Hickey’s writing that it’s impossible to use this book just to find out, say, the signature of the advanced soul.
You’d never find it if you searched the index or the table of contents. You have to read the entire book. (stock up on post-its).
And if you like this style of astrology (with a karmic and spiritual bent) – you really need Hickey’s book on PLUTO as MINERVA, and all about WISDOM. There’s a lot in that book I don’t agree with – but it surely makes you think.
Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
…-------------------------------------------------------
http://www.amazon.com/Astrology-Science-Isabel-M-Hickey/dp/0916360520/rereadablebooksr/
So I tried to post a reply on the Dating Site blog but it wouldn't accept it, I think because I'm not a member of the Dating Site and don't have their cookie on my computer.
So here's what I wrote in my comment, addressing members of the dating site, now redirected at Romance writers (and readers, for that matter).
This seems to be a posting of Hickey's book with the reviews from Amazon, including mine. I've learned a lot about Astrology and Tarot since I wrote that review, from Hickey and most notably from the great Astrology Teacher Noel Tyl whom I quote all the time.
Hickey's concept of Minerva as the symbolism for Pluto explains a lot about how and why Relationships form then blow apart violently (in divorce or worse).
Pluto transits transform people beyond recognition, but still within their Natal potential. Pluto, slowly but inexorably, fulfills natal potential, which is why it makes a good source of believable plot for a novel.
But such major Pluto transits tend to project the energies. Your transit can manifest via other people or the world around you, rather than within the psyche. It's hard for a writer to show-don't-tell the connection between the character and a sequence of plot events such as this:
... your boss fires you just because she's angry at someone else and you can't prove it. On the way home, you stop cleanly at a stop light, and a car whirls around the corner and T-bones your car. Your spouse files for divorce (what a relief) and your dog dies, and your replacement car needs a new transmission, and the house you win in the divorce springs a leak in the roof, and the insurance wasn't paid up, then your Mother dies (expected but the TIMING is exquisite) and at the same time, you win some award or have some totally explosive success that makes everyone you know and respect jealous, then you're diagnosed with Breast Cancer (thank G-d it's caught early, but you have no medical insurance because of the divorce and firing so all the inheritance is gone but you're alive).
Yep. The stuff of soap opera! Remember I did explain how Pluto is the absolute epitome of pure drama, intensified beyond all absurdities.
When a whole series of stuff like that just avalanches into your life over about 2 years, it is very likely a Pluto transit interacting with a) your Natal Chart and b) other major transits to your Natal Chart being amplified by Pluto.
Knowing that Pluto's energy of wisdom ebbs and flows through our spirits, we can learn how directing Pluto's energy into life is somewhat like trying to hold onto a fire hose running full blast. You definitely need HELP to keep it aimed where it can do good not harm.
And that help is your mate. Your Soul Mate.
If you're sitting on a big fire-hose, you need a Wisdom-Heavy Soul Mate to grab onto it behind you and aim YOU at a constructive task.
Well aimed, Pluto does not produce such a list of wild effects as I described above. Instead, it produces one clean, definitive Event from which you learn a new Wisdom, yielding to the lesson and reorganizing yourself around it. That too can make for great story theme and substance.
Pluto is not Love. It's Wisdom.
Love without Wisdom = Disaster.
That's the kind of Disaster that makes fabulous reading!
Below is a link to a blog post I did on Pluto and the generations of young people changing the world.
Those who are attempting to understand Relationships and the phenomenon of the Soul Mate might like to read some of my blog posts based on what I've learned of Tarot and Astrology applied to the field of Romance writing.
You can start with Astrology Just For Writers Part 6 and work your way back through the links in each post. Isabelle Hickey's Pluto/Minerva concept explains a lot especially about sex mixed with violence, bondage, and practices exerting excessive force. Hickey's concepts can provide alternative scenarios especially suited to writing Supernatural Romance and Paranormal Romance.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html
------------------------
Meanwhile, I've just finished reading Deborah Macgillivrey's WOLF IN WOLF'S CLOTHING, a Dorchester Romance.
http://deborahmacgillivray.blogspot.com/2009/09/wolf-in-wolfs-clothing-now-in-kindle.html
I think I found her on twitter, and the book sounded right up my alley. I'd read about a third when I asked her the following as a comment on her blog (linked above)
---------
I'm still reading WOLF. Can you explain why you put the first really hot sex scene at the 1/3 point of the narrative and why it's over 10 pages long with several settings?
Since I keep writing blog posts on writing craft for the Alien Romance blog ( aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com ) questions of structure like this keep coming up.
Is this a Dorchester requirement or a pacing you find works with your readers? (and may I quote you?)
-------------
And she answered:
My characters act and react within their own parameters of who they are. In my second historical, “In Her Bed”, the first sex scene happened early on, simply because the plot opens with the heroine trying to get with child in order to hold onto her fiefs in Medieval Scotland. When and how characters meet, what is driving them, gives each story its own pace. In the first book in the Sisters of Colford Hall™ series, “The Invasion of Falgannon Isle”, Desmond comes to the island with vengeance on his mind. As soon as he arrives, he falls for the magic of the heroine and her quirky island, so their romance dictated the sexual scenes be put off. In “Riding the Thunder” the second book, Jago (Trevelyn’s twin) was in a flux, knowing their seeking vengeance against the sisters was not right. Thus, it pushed the sexual encounters farther back into the book because of his conscience gnawing on him.
When I created Trev, I wanted an arrogant man, used to taking life as he wanted, and little worrying about what happened after. He was a “wolf” in the truest sense. And he wanted Raven. He would not hold back, seeing sex as a way to bind Raven to him. Instead, it bound him to her?something he didn’t count on. Raven was the most vulnerable of the sisters, less willing to take risks. She’d spent so long creating a “Tolkein” faerytale world where she was safe, secure. Her letting go so early in the relationship and allowing Trev into her bed, her life, was her taking that ultimate gamble for something very special.
So, since I am allowed to write the stories as I want, it’s the characters themselves who say how the emotions and the sexual extension of that love occur and when. I love logic. Everything has to fit the logical make up of that character, or it just doesn’t fit. It won’t ring true for the reader.
If you find anything to help you, please feel free to use quotes.
November 2, 2009 4:56 PM
----------------------------
Now you can see from Deborah Macgillivray's track record that she has gained a readership that Dorchester Love Spell and Zebra Historicals know how to reach and serve. That's why she's "allowed" to write them as she sees them. She has created a market.
She has gained a gut-level understanding of the story that her readers are following, so she just has to follow her nose through her story to turn out a slam-bang perfect of its kind novel (yeah, she's that good).
Then I was thinking about WOLF IN WOLF'S CLOTHING (BTW it's not werewolf, and the paranormal is left gray and equivocal) and the similarity to Sharon Green's first DAW novel series, THE WARRIOR WITHIN. Green does not write that way -- follow-her-nose -- she does it on purpose.
Green took John Norman's Gor novels and (in response to a challenge uttered at a party at an SF convention) turned the Gor novel formula inside out and upside down (a totally unthinkable feat in professional story-telling at that time).
Sharon Green:
on Amazon
John Norman
John Norman on Amazon
Sharon Green took the cave-man, sword-slinging beast-man who rescued and ravished damsels with total disregard for their person-hood, and switched the point of view.
She did it pretty much on a dare (yes, I know Sharon Green and I like her a lot!)
The first novel sold so well, she got to do a whole series, showing how this character, Terrilian, a very strong woman with massive immaturity, learns that her preferences aren't the only ones that matter.
I couldn't put The Terrilian Series down! Really. Those books are as fascinating and absorbing as some of the best fanfic I've ever read, and I had never been able to read the source-material by John Norman.
Sharon Green dealt with teaching this lesson in Relationship to a woman, using the same trope John Norman used, but mirror-imaged.
See comments on my post http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/7-proofing-steps-for-quality-writing.html for comments on trope.
In the 1970's when women were struggling to attain a new identity in mid-life, Sharon's mirror-imaging of the male fantasy founded a blazing career for her.
But if you check the reviews of Terrilian on Amazon, though they are plentiful, there is a segment of the readership that came looking for "Romance" that went away bitterly disappointed.
At the time Sharon invented Terrilian, there was no commercial place for ANY relationship-driven action novels on either side of the Romance/SF divide. That was an absolute. (before the Web and e-books, there really was no place but the author's bottom drawer or fireplace.)
That was the decade when "Warrior" meant "male archetype" and nothing else. The female warrior archetype was literally "unthinkable" and certainly not commercial.
Yet Sharon Green's Terrilian novels, the series called THE WARRIOR SERIES, sold like hotcakes and therefore built a bridge over that divide with a very sophisticated use of the male action trope.
Sharon Green generated a public, popular, Group Mind image of a female warrior and what it means to be a female with warrior traits -- and those warrior traits are on the psychological level more than the physical (though physical courage is not lacking, it's not where the battle is joined).
There is no battle more fierce than the battle against one's own self-image.
As I've said before, there are things about writing that readers don't want or need to know if they simply want to read for the pleasure of reading.
But all writers could wish that most readers knew the difference between a badly written book and a book they simply dislike. I tried to address that issue of "Quality" in my post:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/7-proofing-steps-for-quality-writing.html
Despite the scathing reviews juxtaposed against the over-the-top rave reviews for Sharon Green's WARRIOR series, what you have in the Warrior Series is a very HIGH QUALITY piece of work.
Regardless of whether you like the dark story, the brutality mixed with sex, the raw power nature of the sexual component of what later (7 huge novels later) becomes a more emotional and intellectual Relationship, you should be able to see the QUALITY of what Sharon accomplished.
In addition to that Quality, Sharon broke trope without breaking it. She did what Hollywood always demands: something the same but different.
A great deal of what you see on the Romance and Action Romance stands today is based on the breakthrough Sharon Green made with this series.
You can make a fortune if you can master the thinking method used to arrive at the CONCEPT of mirroring the insanely popular male-action trope the Gor books epitomize, and selling the same male action-packed trope to WOMEN who wanted freedom without the price of maturity. That's where we were in the 1970's and even into the 1980's among adult women raised to be subservient to men.
Today, news reports of more violence against women on TV dramas than ever before are bandied about as a horrifying development, not as evidence of women succeeding in becoming Combat Officers in the Army (unthinkable development - there might be a woman in command over men! Can't have that!) Women now FIGHT and even win against men, in combat or board room.
Fiction didn't exactly lead the way, but Sharon Green and other writers who portrayed for the young generation of women a way of thinking, living and feeling that is both feminine and aggressive created a new trope for female-self-image.
Find the next thing that needs changing and invert the trope of that in our fiction.
THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT.
If you're familiar with both WOLF IN WOLF'S CLOTHING and WARRIOR WITHIN, you can follow this contrast-compare more easily but I'll try to make it simple (OK, you can stop laughing now). This is important because it's about "targeting a readership."
Wolf in Wolf's Clothing is written to a generation of women raised to expect themselves to have to mature and remain women.
Warrior Within was written to a generation of women raised to expect themselves to get everything without maturing in order to remain women. (i.e. there WAS no archetype for THE MATURE WOMAN in American culture; we had to invent it. Marion Zimmer Bradley was one of the leaders with her Renunciates of Darkover -- but RENOUNCING protection isn't the key to a woman's maturity. It's only a step.) Think of I LOVE LUCY which I hope you've seen in endless reruns. Lucy portrays the archetype of yore. Wolf in Wolf's Clothing portrays the archetype of the near future, what the 14 year old girls of today will mature into (maybe sans magic; maybe not).
Both attitudes of the female READERSHIP addressed specifically by AUTHORS, (almost two generations apart) -- both attitudes are culturally inculcated. They do not represent Natal Chart personality or any individuality.
What you absorb subconsciously before you are old enough to speak is really hard to edit later in life. (Magical Initiation, Religious Conversion, or a massive Pluto transit as described above can force you to edit your operating system and "recompile" the code.)
That originally absorbed cultural material becomes part of your identity. (look up CULTURE SHOCK and read Alvin Toffler's book FUTURE SHOCK and Edward T. Hall's book THE SILENT LANGUAGE).
http://www.amazon.com/Future-Shock-Alvin-Toffler/dp/0553277375/rereadablebooksr/
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_4_10?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=the+silent+language&sprefix=The+Silent
Both of which are products of the 1960's & 1970's culture and give you tremendous insight into what exactly has changed and where the next change of that magnitude is coming from. But these books give you the principles by which civilizations change on the archetypal level, and thus let you do some worldbuilding that readers will believe.
Macgillivrey and Green are both taking a character and "teaching them a lesson." And that lesson breaks their self-image.
Another series that does that with Pluto's huge hammer blows is the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Series by Laurell K. Hamilton.
The Pluto-Minerva lesson in Wisdom has to BREAK the person, SHATTER a wall they don't even know is inside them, DESTROY their very identity at its core, in order to penetrate "down" to the layer where the error exists.
We accept anything that resides at that inner level as "Wisdom." Even if it's wrong. Perhaps especially if it's wrong.
The process of rewriting, debugging, recompiling and rebooting that internal Wisdom Operating System isn't likely to happen without a major Pluto transit with all the dark power-symbolism erupting full force. (Pluto transits can work the other way, too, changing correct information into incorrect information - Pluto is not survival-oriented except on the Soul level.) The older you are, the more force Pluto has to bring to bear to create real change.
Once that erroneous information coded into the core being is removed and replaced by new information, the PERSON literally becomes someone else.
What gives them pleasure changes. What gives them grief changes. All the emotional circuitry leading from events in the outside world to the gut-level responses within gets rewired and the resulting behavior in response to stimulus changes.
Ah, but the NATAL CHART does not change!!! This is still the same life lived by the same soul.
But any human observer would say, no, it's NOT THE SAME PERSON.
What is it that can produce this effect?
It's not the standard Saturn Transit that often opens one's eyes, strips away things you depend on, and shatters your ego, challenging your values. Saturn makes great plot material, but this is deeper.
connect what happened when you were 27, with what happened at 28 or 29 -- that's the maturing effect of the first Saturn return. Don't trust anyone over thirty -- is true. It's a gulf you cross to maturity and your responses to input will change.
Macgillivrey and Green are writing about a different kind of transit from the Saturn transit.
The reason that SEXUALITY and VIOLENCE and FORCE and ABSOLUTLY IMPLACABLE determination and total OBSESSION and HORRENDOUSLY COMPLETE CHANGE and even CRIME (Pluto is violent crime), DISEASE AND DEATH,INHERITANCE and HERITAGE are the forces driving both plots is that the transformation these authors are writing about is a PLUTO TRANSIT transformation.
Scorpio. Pluto. Force majeur. The underground. The subconscious.
For more on the symbolism I'm discussing with Pluto see my post on the generation signature by Pluto's Sign
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html
That post is also Targeting a Readership Part Two.
For contrast with Wolf and Warrior, my first award winner, UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER is about a FIRST SATURN RETURN and is driven by all the keywords of Saturn, even the background and worldbuilding is derived from Saturn keywords.
The change that both Macgillivrey and Green were illustrating artistically was a change to the deepest core ASSUMPTIONS (not beliefs) of the main character each was dealing with.
In the early days, Green had to teach a lesson on that level to women.
Today, we feel the need to teach men a lesson.
As currently transiting Pluto enters Capricorn and shifts emphasis and coloration, we are in the mopping up part of the Gender Wars.
I didn't mention in Astrology Just For Writers Part 6 that along with Pluto's entry into Capricorn we also are looking forward to Neptune entering Pisces, it's own sign.
Remember how I made the point that the generation born with Pluto in its own sign (Scorpio) had a greatly emphasized Pluto energy in their personality, the source of what they obssess on and enjoy most, what they're willing to pay for in entertainment? Neptune will become exceptionally prominent like that when it's in Pisces, its own sign.
2011 or maybe 2012 should show us more of how that will work on the general group psyche of current adults, and it'll be a good 15-20 years before we know what the children of that generation with Pluto in Capricorn and Neptune in Pisces will go for in entertainment.
But note that as Pluto transited its own sign of Scorpio, we got the MORE-MORE-MORE-VIOLENCE-POWER-IS-EVERYTHING generation of video game players.
Neptune rules Pisces, and as it transits its own sign the keywords connected with Neptune will manifest in our cultural assumptions.
One pervasive effect of Neptune is to convince you that your highest ideal (12th House, Neptune and Pisces are about IDEALS among many other slippery things including entertainment itself) - that your highest Ideal already is a fact.
Saturn is Fact.
Neptune is Ideal.
Pluto is Force.
Uranus is Freedom.
Uranus will simultaneously be entering Aries, ruled by Mars (war; whereas Pluto is the upper octave of Mars which might be seen as nuclear war, supervolcanoes rather than mere volcanoes).
These 3 factors (Pluto in Capricorn, Neptune in Pisces, Uranus in Aries) will persist while Saturn sweeps through Scorpio and Sagittarius and maybe on into Capricorn which Saturn rules).
That is the "atmosphere" we'll be writing our fiction in. People battered by those forces, concerned by those issues, burned out over dilemmas and conundrums (Neptune), fighting with their teenagers over what the teens see as reality, will come seeking LOVE CONQUERS ALL and THE ALL POWERFUL H.E.A.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/snow-dogs-and-happily-ever-after.html
What lessons will the people born with Pluto in Scorpio (1985-1995 or so) need to see worked out in their Art (our novels) as they live through these transits?
What lesson in Relationship, what Wisdom, has to be "beaten" (Pluto) into their "heads" (Aries rules the head).
What do they assume is true (Neptune) which actually might become true if they would "wake up" (Uranus) to themselves (Aries) and accept the Discipline (Saturn) of Wisdom (Minerva-Pluto).
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.jacquelinelichtenberg.com
http://awardwinningdatingsites.com/320/astrology-a-cosmic-science/comment-page-1/#respond
Astrology A Cosmic Science is very old and the author, Isabelle Hickey, is now gone, alas, but this book came back into print recently.
It was written around the time Pluto was just discovered and Astrologers were trying to figure it out.
http://www.amazon.com/Astrology-Science-Isabel-M-Hickey/dp/0916360520/rereadablebooksr/
I had written about the book on Amazon:
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Strewn With Hidden Gems Of Wisdom
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
The strength of this book is the deep, rich context surrounding each topic. But for many, that would be its weakness.
I use it as a reference book – when I’m stumped by a chart, I just page through this book looking for new associations to break the logjam in my mind. But in truth, this is a book to read cover-to-cover, pasting in post-it-notes to mark the bits and pieces of unrelated but illuminating wisdom tossed into various discussions.
For example, in one very illuminating section of this book, Hickey discusses each of the signs as it manifests as the Ascendant – then under each sign as the Ascendant, she discusses each of the signs that would be on the other House Cusps if there are no interceptions, or if you use equal-house methods.
She shows you how the rising sign synthesizes with the signs on each of the cusps – to create some of the characteristics of people with that sign rising, and to color the house involved. This explains WHY a particular ascendant tends to produce people who behave a particular way.
The book is worth its price for that section alone — if you’re willing to just sit for a couple of hours and read all the rising signs, one section after the other. The faster you read it, the more sense it makes. The section is laid out very systematically, and that system reveals vistas of astrological truths in and of itself.
However, at random throughout the section, a few sentences, “throw away dialog,” and offhand allusions are tossed into other topics to point you to bits of knowledge about how astrology works and what it’s actually for. These bits are not taken up anywhere else in the book, not assembled, not set into a larger context, and not indexed. They just leap out at you as if outlined in soul-fire.
For example: In the section devoted to Capricorn Rising, which puts Libra on the 10th, Hickey says, “Venus’s sign in Saturn’s house is often loving for the sake of expediency. This is not true of the more evolved individual. Students often ask the question, “How can one tell the evolvement of an individual in the chart?” Character is shown by the signs in which the planets are placed. Planets in their sign of exaltation and in the signs they rule are indications of an evolved consciousness. Also the higher-octave planets — Neptune, Uranus, Pluto, and Jupiter — in the first, fourth, seventh, or tenth house show that the individual has had much soul experience in other lifetimes”.
You see? For that alone, this is worth the cover price, and there are lots and lots of those throughout the whole book.
Maybe these bits of wisdom aren’t actually true. But as you go, “Aha!” and pull out a dozen charts of people you know well to check out Hickey’s theory, you learn vast amounts more about astrology than you ever would have without investigating that theory.
I came to amazon today looking for links to used copies of Hickey’s book and was delighted to find it in print. I had been paging through this book at random the other day and it gave me a flash of inspiration. I used that insight to write two columns for my sf/f review column called ReReadable Books. Hickey had connected several sf novels for me, using the 7th House, the 6 of Swords and how they generate the art of storycraft. I’m a professional sf author, and teach writing online, and I needed to write a handout for the Writing Workshop at the World Science Fiction Convention. Before I leafed through Hickey’s book, I had no clue in my mind what I could offer at that Workshop. Then I produced a 14 page essay which will probably be the October and November installments of my column.
So, the strength of this book lies in the context surrounding the facts, a context which assembles random bits of the universe in which you live into a pattern that makes sense. But that context material is so randomly placed – so “stream of consciousness” in the style of Hickey’s writing that it’s impossible to use this book just to find out, say, the signature of the advanced soul.
You’d never find it if you searched the index or the table of contents. You have to read the entire book. (stock up on post-its).
And if you like this style of astrology (with a karmic and spiritual bent) – you really need Hickey’s book on PLUTO as MINERVA, and all about WISDOM. There’s a lot in that book I don’t agree with – but it surely makes you think.
Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
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http://www.amazon.com/Astrology-Science-Isabel-M-Hickey/dp/0916360520/rereadablebooksr/
So I tried to post a reply on the Dating Site blog but it wouldn't accept it, I think because I'm not a member of the Dating Site and don't have their cookie on my computer.
So here's what I wrote in my comment, addressing members of the dating site, now redirected at Romance writers (and readers, for that matter).
This seems to be a posting of Hickey's book with the reviews from Amazon, including mine. I've learned a lot about Astrology and Tarot since I wrote that review, from Hickey and most notably from the great Astrology Teacher Noel Tyl whom I quote all the time.
Hickey's concept of Minerva as the symbolism for Pluto explains a lot about how and why Relationships form then blow apart violently (in divorce or worse).
Pluto transits transform people beyond recognition, but still within their Natal potential. Pluto, slowly but inexorably, fulfills natal potential, which is why it makes a good source of believable plot for a novel.
But such major Pluto transits tend to project the energies. Your transit can manifest via other people or the world around you, rather than within the psyche. It's hard for a writer to show-don't-tell the connection between the character and a sequence of plot events such as this:
... your boss fires you just because she's angry at someone else and you can't prove it. On the way home, you stop cleanly at a stop light, and a car whirls around the corner and T-bones your car. Your spouse files for divorce (what a relief) and your dog dies, and your replacement car needs a new transmission, and the house you win in the divorce springs a leak in the roof, and the insurance wasn't paid up, then your Mother dies (expected but the TIMING is exquisite) and at the same time, you win some award or have some totally explosive success that makes everyone you know and respect jealous, then you're diagnosed with Breast Cancer (thank G-d it's caught early, but you have no medical insurance because of the divorce and firing so all the inheritance is gone but you're alive).
Yep. The stuff of soap opera! Remember I did explain how Pluto is the absolute epitome of pure drama, intensified beyond all absurdities.
When a whole series of stuff like that just avalanches into your life over about 2 years, it is very likely a Pluto transit interacting with a) your Natal Chart and b) other major transits to your Natal Chart being amplified by Pluto.
Knowing that Pluto's energy of wisdom ebbs and flows through our spirits, we can learn how directing Pluto's energy into life is somewhat like trying to hold onto a fire hose running full blast. You definitely need HELP to keep it aimed where it can do good not harm.
And that help is your mate. Your Soul Mate.
If you're sitting on a big fire-hose, you need a Wisdom-Heavy Soul Mate to grab onto it behind you and aim YOU at a constructive task.
Well aimed, Pluto does not produce such a list of wild effects as I described above. Instead, it produces one clean, definitive Event from which you learn a new Wisdom, yielding to the lesson and reorganizing yourself around it. That too can make for great story theme and substance.
Pluto is not Love. It's Wisdom.
Love without Wisdom = Disaster.
That's the kind of Disaster that makes fabulous reading!
Below is a link to a blog post I did on Pluto and the generations of young people changing the world.
Those who are attempting to understand Relationships and the phenomenon of the Soul Mate might like to read some of my blog posts based on what I've learned of Tarot and Astrology applied to the field of Romance writing.
You can start with Astrology Just For Writers Part 6 and work your way back through the links in each post. Isabelle Hickey's Pluto/Minerva concept explains a lot especially about sex mixed with violence, bondage, and practices exerting excessive force. Hickey's concepts can provide alternative scenarios especially suited to writing Supernatural Romance and Paranormal Romance.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html
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Meanwhile, I've just finished reading Deborah Macgillivrey's WOLF IN WOLF'S CLOTHING, a Dorchester Romance.
http://deborahmacgillivray.blogspot.com/2009/09/wolf-in-wolfs-clothing-now-in-kindle.html
I think I found her on twitter, and the book sounded right up my alley. I'd read about a third when I asked her the following as a comment on her blog (linked above)
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I'm still reading WOLF. Can you explain why you put the first really hot sex scene at the 1/3 point of the narrative and why it's over 10 pages long with several settings?
Since I keep writing blog posts on writing craft for the Alien Romance blog ( aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com ) questions of structure like this keep coming up.
Is this a Dorchester requirement or a pacing you find works with your readers? (and may I quote you?)
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And she answered:
My characters act and react within their own parameters of who they are. In my second historical, “In Her Bed”, the first sex scene happened early on, simply because the plot opens with the heroine trying to get with child in order to hold onto her fiefs in Medieval Scotland. When and how characters meet, what is driving them, gives each story its own pace. In the first book in the Sisters of Colford Hall™ series, “The Invasion of Falgannon Isle”, Desmond comes to the island with vengeance on his mind. As soon as he arrives, he falls for the magic of the heroine and her quirky island, so their romance dictated the sexual scenes be put off. In “Riding the Thunder” the second book, Jago (Trevelyn’s twin) was in a flux, knowing their seeking vengeance against the sisters was not right. Thus, it pushed the sexual encounters farther back into the book because of his conscience gnawing on him.
When I created Trev, I wanted an arrogant man, used to taking life as he wanted, and little worrying about what happened after. He was a “wolf” in the truest sense. And he wanted Raven. He would not hold back, seeing sex as a way to bind Raven to him. Instead, it bound him to her?something he didn’t count on. Raven was the most vulnerable of the sisters, less willing to take risks. She’d spent so long creating a “Tolkein” faerytale world where she was safe, secure. Her letting go so early in the relationship and allowing Trev into her bed, her life, was her taking that ultimate gamble for something very special.
So, since I am allowed to write the stories as I want, it’s the characters themselves who say how the emotions and the sexual extension of that love occur and when. I love logic. Everything has to fit the logical make up of that character, or it just doesn’t fit. It won’t ring true for the reader.
If you find anything to help you, please feel free to use quotes.
November 2, 2009 4:56 PM
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Now you can see from Deborah Macgillivray's track record that she has gained a readership that Dorchester Love Spell and Zebra Historicals know how to reach and serve. That's why she's "allowed" to write them as she sees them. She has created a market.
She has gained a gut-level understanding of the story that her readers are following, so she just has to follow her nose through her story to turn out a slam-bang perfect of its kind novel (yeah, she's that good).
Then I was thinking about WOLF IN WOLF'S CLOTHING (BTW it's not werewolf, and the paranormal is left gray and equivocal) and the similarity to Sharon Green's first DAW novel series, THE WARRIOR WITHIN. Green does not write that way -- follow-her-nose -- she does it on purpose.
Green took John Norman's Gor novels and (in response to a challenge uttered at a party at an SF convention) turned the Gor novel formula inside out and upside down (a totally unthinkable feat in professional story-telling at that time).
Sharon Green:
on Amazon
John Norman
John Norman on Amazon
Sharon Green took the cave-man, sword-slinging beast-man who rescued and ravished damsels with total disregard for their person-hood, and switched the point of view.
She did it pretty much on a dare (yes, I know Sharon Green and I like her a lot!)
The first novel sold so well, she got to do a whole series, showing how this character, Terrilian, a very strong woman with massive immaturity, learns that her preferences aren't the only ones that matter.
I couldn't put The Terrilian Series down! Really. Those books are as fascinating and absorbing as some of the best fanfic I've ever read, and I had never been able to read the source-material by John Norman.
Sharon Green dealt with teaching this lesson in Relationship to a woman, using the same trope John Norman used, but mirror-imaged.
See comments on my post http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/7-proofing-steps-for-quality-writing.html for comments on trope.
In the 1970's when women were struggling to attain a new identity in mid-life, Sharon's mirror-imaging of the male fantasy founded a blazing career for her.
But if you check the reviews of Terrilian on Amazon, though they are plentiful, there is a segment of the readership that came looking for "Romance" that went away bitterly disappointed.
At the time Sharon invented Terrilian, there was no commercial place for ANY relationship-driven action novels on either side of the Romance/SF divide. That was an absolute. (before the Web and e-books, there really was no place but the author's bottom drawer or fireplace.)
That was the decade when "Warrior" meant "male archetype" and nothing else. The female warrior archetype was literally "unthinkable" and certainly not commercial.
Yet Sharon Green's Terrilian novels, the series called THE WARRIOR SERIES, sold like hotcakes and therefore built a bridge over that divide with a very sophisticated use of the male action trope.
Sharon Green generated a public, popular, Group Mind image of a female warrior and what it means to be a female with warrior traits -- and those warrior traits are on the psychological level more than the physical (though physical courage is not lacking, it's not where the battle is joined).
There is no battle more fierce than the battle against one's own self-image.
As I've said before, there are things about writing that readers don't want or need to know if they simply want to read for the pleasure of reading.
But all writers could wish that most readers knew the difference between a badly written book and a book they simply dislike. I tried to address that issue of "Quality" in my post:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/7-proofing-steps-for-quality-writing.html
Despite the scathing reviews juxtaposed against the over-the-top rave reviews for Sharon Green's WARRIOR series, what you have in the Warrior Series is a very HIGH QUALITY piece of work.
Regardless of whether you like the dark story, the brutality mixed with sex, the raw power nature of the sexual component of what later (7 huge novels later) becomes a more emotional and intellectual Relationship, you should be able to see the QUALITY of what Sharon accomplished.
In addition to that Quality, Sharon broke trope without breaking it. She did what Hollywood always demands: something the same but different.
A great deal of what you see on the Romance and Action Romance stands today is based on the breakthrough Sharon Green made with this series.
You can make a fortune if you can master the thinking method used to arrive at the CONCEPT of mirroring the insanely popular male-action trope the Gor books epitomize, and selling the same male action-packed trope to WOMEN who wanted freedom without the price of maturity. That's where we were in the 1970's and even into the 1980's among adult women raised to be subservient to men.
Today, news reports of more violence against women on TV dramas than ever before are bandied about as a horrifying development, not as evidence of women succeeding in becoming Combat Officers in the Army (unthinkable development - there might be a woman in command over men! Can't have that!) Women now FIGHT and even win against men, in combat or board room.
Fiction didn't exactly lead the way, but Sharon Green and other writers who portrayed for the young generation of women a way of thinking, living and feeling that is both feminine and aggressive created a new trope for female-self-image.
Find the next thing that needs changing and invert the trope of that in our fiction.
THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT.
If you're familiar with both WOLF IN WOLF'S CLOTHING and WARRIOR WITHIN, you can follow this contrast-compare more easily but I'll try to make it simple (OK, you can stop laughing now). This is important because it's about "targeting a readership."
Wolf in Wolf's Clothing is written to a generation of women raised to expect themselves to have to mature and remain women.
Warrior Within was written to a generation of women raised to expect themselves to get everything without maturing in order to remain women. (i.e. there WAS no archetype for THE MATURE WOMAN in American culture; we had to invent it. Marion Zimmer Bradley was one of the leaders with her Renunciates of Darkover -- but RENOUNCING protection isn't the key to a woman's maturity. It's only a step.) Think of I LOVE LUCY which I hope you've seen in endless reruns. Lucy portrays the archetype of yore. Wolf in Wolf's Clothing portrays the archetype of the near future, what the 14 year old girls of today will mature into (maybe sans magic; maybe not).
Both attitudes of the female READERSHIP addressed specifically by AUTHORS, (almost two generations apart) -- both attitudes are culturally inculcated. They do not represent Natal Chart personality or any individuality.
What you absorb subconsciously before you are old enough to speak is really hard to edit later in life. (Magical Initiation, Religious Conversion, or a massive Pluto transit as described above can force you to edit your operating system and "recompile" the code.)
That originally absorbed cultural material becomes part of your identity. (look up CULTURE SHOCK and read Alvin Toffler's book FUTURE SHOCK and Edward T. Hall's book THE SILENT LANGUAGE).
http://www.amazon.com/Future-Shock-Alvin-Toffler/dp/0553277375/rereadablebooksr/
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_4_10?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=the+silent+language&sprefix=The+Silent
Both of which are products of the 1960's & 1970's culture and give you tremendous insight into what exactly has changed and where the next change of that magnitude is coming from. But these books give you the principles by which civilizations change on the archetypal level, and thus let you do some worldbuilding that readers will believe.
Macgillivrey and Green are both taking a character and "teaching them a lesson." And that lesson breaks their self-image.
Another series that does that with Pluto's huge hammer blows is the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Series by Laurell K. Hamilton.
The Pluto-Minerva lesson in Wisdom has to BREAK the person, SHATTER a wall they don't even know is inside them, DESTROY their very identity at its core, in order to penetrate "down" to the layer where the error exists.
We accept anything that resides at that inner level as "Wisdom." Even if it's wrong. Perhaps especially if it's wrong.
The process of rewriting, debugging, recompiling and rebooting that internal Wisdom Operating System isn't likely to happen without a major Pluto transit with all the dark power-symbolism erupting full force. (Pluto transits can work the other way, too, changing correct information into incorrect information - Pluto is not survival-oriented except on the Soul level.) The older you are, the more force Pluto has to bring to bear to create real change.
Once that erroneous information coded into the core being is removed and replaced by new information, the PERSON literally becomes someone else.
What gives them pleasure changes. What gives them grief changes. All the emotional circuitry leading from events in the outside world to the gut-level responses within gets rewired and the resulting behavior in response to stimulus changes.
Ah, but the NATAL CHART does not change!!! This is still the same life lived by the same soul.
But any human observer would say, no, it's NOT THE SAME PERSON.
What is it that can produce this effect?
It's not the standard Saturn Transit that often opens one's eyes, strips away things you depend on, and shatters your ego, challenging your values. Saturn makes great plot material, but this is deeper.
connect what happened when you were 27, with what happened at 28 or 29 -- that's the maturing effect of the first Saturn return. Don't trust anyone over thirty -- is true. It's a gulf you cross to maturity and your responses to input will change.
Macgillivrey and Green are writing about a different kind of transit from the Saturn transit.
The reason that SEXUALITY and VIOLENCE and FORCE and ABSOLUTLY IMPLACABLE determination and total OBSESSION and HORRENDOUSLY COMPLETE CHANGE and even CRIME (Pluto is violent crime), DISEASE AND DEATH,INHERITANCE and HERITAGE are the forces driving both plots is that the transformation these authors are writing about is a PLUTO TRANSIT transformation.
Scorpio. Pluto. Force majeur. The underground. The subconscious.
For more on the symbolism I'm discussing with Pluto see my post on the generation signature by Pluto's Sign
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html
That post is also Targeting a Readership Part Two.
For contrast with Wolf and Warrior, my first award winner, UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER is about a FIRST SATURN RETURN and is driven by all the keywords of Saturn, even the background and worldbuilding is derived from Saturn keywords.
The change that both Macgillivrey and Green were illustrating artistically was a change to the deepest core ASSUMPTIONS (not beliefs) of the main character each was dealing with.
In the early days, Green had to teach a lesson on that level to women.
Today, we feel the need to teach men a lesson.
As currently transiting Pluto enters Capricorn and shifts emphasis and coloration, we are in the mopping up part of the Gender Wars.
I didn't mention in Astrology Just For Writers Part 6 that along with Pluto's entry into Capricorn we also are looking forward to Neptune entering Pisces, it's own sign.
Remember how I made the point that the generation born with Pluto in its own sign (Scorpio) had a greatly emphasized Pluto energy in their personality, the source of what they obssess on and enjoy most, what they're willing to pay for in entertainment? Neptune will become exceptionally prominent like that when it's in Pisces, its own sign.
2011 or maybe 2012 should show us more of how that will work on the general group psyche of current adults, and it'll be a good 15-20 years before we know what the children of that generation with Pluto in Capricorn and Neptune in Pisces will go for in entertainment.
But note that as Pluto transited its own sign of Scorpio, we got the MORE-MORE-MORE-VIOLENCE-POWER-IS-EVERYTHING generation of video game players.
Neptune rules Pisces, and as it transits its own sign the keywords connected with Neptune will manifest in our cultural assumptions.
One pervasive effect of Neptune is to convince you that your highest ideal (12th House, Neptune and Pisces are about IDEALS among many other slippery things including entertainment itself) - that your highest Ideal already is a fact.
Saturn is Fact.
Neptune is Ideal.
Pluto is Force.
Uranus is Freedom.
Uranus will simultaneously be entering Aries, ruled by Mars (war; whereas Pluto is the upper octave of Mars which might be seen as nuclear war, supervolcanoes rather than mere volcanoes).
These 3 factors (Pluto in Capricorn, Neptune in Pisces, Uranus in Aries) will persist while Saturn sweeps through Scorpio and Sagittarius and maybe on into Capricorn which Saturn rules).
That is the "atmosphere" we'll be writing our fiction in. People battered by those forces, concerned by those issues, burned out over dilemmas and conundrums (Neptune), fighting with their teenagers over what the teens see as reality, will come seeking LOVE CONQUERS ALL and THE ALL POWERFUL H.E.A.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/snow-dogs-and-happily-ever-after.html
What lessons will the people born with Pluto in Scorpio (1985-1995 or so) need to see worked out in their Art (our novels) as they live through these transits?
What lesson in Relationship, what Wisdom, has to be "beaten" (Pluto) into their "heads" (Aries rules the head).
What do they assume is true (Neptune) which actually might become true if they would "wake up" (Uranus) to themselves (Aries) and accept the Discipline (Saturn) of Wisdom (Minerva-Pluto).
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Monday, November 09, 2009
FFFig! Fantasy, Futuristic & Ghost (or why the wrong label sucks)
Heather and passengers have had some interesting and productive discussions on the labeling and categorizing of science fiction romance over on her blog, The Galaxy Express recently. This is no new discussion, but it is one we evidently must keep having because apparently even those deep in the business trenches of commercial genre fiction Don't Get It.
Case in point: Amazon. Now, many of you know I have no love for Amazon. I recognize it as a necessary evil at most times. I also recognize it's a hugely popular site and I am appreciative of their innovations in on-line book marketing and such. So given that they were one of the first, one would think--wouldn't one--that they'd know what in hell they market.
Sadly, they're perpetuating part of the deep problem science fiction romance has in declaring it's identity. Amazon--arguably one of the largest on-line marketers of books--has (if one goes to the ROMANCE categories) lumped science fiction romance/futuristics/romantic science fiction in the following category:
Fantasy, Futuristic and Ghost
If you don't believe me, click here for the Romance section with the categories on the left. Click here for their FFG category.
Notice they break out "vampires" and "time travel." They don't have a category called Fangs and Far Back in Time. Noooo. Vampire romance is recognized as a (sub)genre of its own. So is Gothic. So is Romantic Suspence. But science fiction romance? We're lumped in with elves and temporal disorientation and things that go boo.
I can understand if space was a consideration, as it would be in a brick-and-mortar store. It's not. This is a website. It's a matter of creating pages and hyperlinks to same. It's a matter of
coding. It's so simple it's ridiculous.
So is lumping in science fiction romance with magic swords and ectoplasm.
Is it any wonder readers can become confused?
Granted, science fiction and fantasy have long been lumped together. But ghosts? I wasn't even aware Ghost Romance was a valid subgenre. But if it is, shouldn't it belong with vampires? I mean, vampires and ghosts seem to have more in common (at least, on Halloween they do), than starships and ghosts.
I'm now tempted to pen a story about a haunted starship that crash lands on a planet and is eaten by a dragon. At least then it would be properly categorized on Amazon.
'Nuff said. ~Linnea
http://www.linneasinclair.com/
Watch for Rebels and Lovers, Book #4 in the Dock Five Universe! Coming March 2010 from Bantam Dell
Case in point: Amazon. Now, many of you know I have no love for Amazon. I recognize it as a necessary evil at most times. I also recognize it's a hugely popular site and I am appreciative of their innovations in on-line book marketing and such. So given that they were one of the first, one would think--wouldn't one--that they'd know what in hell they market.
Sadly, they're perpetuating part of the deep problem science fiction romance has in declaring it's identity. Amazon--arguably one of the largest on-line marketers of books--has (if one goes to the ROMANCE categories) lumped science fiction romance/futuristics/romantic science fiction in the following category:
Fantasy, Futuristic and Ghost
If you don't believe me, click here for the Romance section with the categories on the left. Click here for their FFG category.
Notice they break out "vampires" and "time travel." They don't have a category called Fangs and Far Back in Time. Noooo. Vampire romance is recognized as a (sub)genre of its own. So is Gothic. So is Romantic Suspence. But science fiction romance? We're lumped in with elves and temporal disorientation and things that go boo.
I can understand if space was a consideration, as it would be in a brick-and-mortar store. It's not. This is a website. It's a matter of creating pages and hyperlinks to same. It's a matter of
coding. It's so simple it's ridiculous.So is lumping in science fiction romance with magic swords and ectoplasm.
Is it any wonder readers can become confused?
Granted, science fiction and fantasy have long been lumped together. But ghosts? I wasn't even aware Ghost Romance was a valid subgenre. But if it is, shouldn't it belong with vampires? I mean, vampires and ghosts seem to have more in common (at least, on Halloween they do), than starships and ghosts.
I'm now tempted to pen a story about a haunted starship that crash lands on a planet and is eaten by a dragon. At least then it would be properly categorized on Amazon.
'Nuff said. ~Linnea
http://www.linneasinclair.com/
Watch for Rebels and Lovers, Book #4 in the Dock Five Universe! Coming March 2010 from Bantam Dell
Sunday, November 08, 2009
Eclectic doings
If this video posts, it is my latest attempt to use images of galaxies to accompany a recording of me reading... so the sound track is important, and the visuals are not.
It's the reverse of music accompanying text and specific visuals, which is the usual way of book trailers.
I'm trying to keep up with NaNoWriMo, and at this time of year I always seem to have a lot of balls in the air. (Juggling metaphor)
One of my earliest memories of story-telling technique lessons in school might be called "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" method. (It wasn't called that). You start with a list of unlikely ingredients, or characters, go with the flow, and try to create a rational and cohesive story.
This method may have harmed me for life! Anyway, I am still more of a puzzler than anything else, and my four unlikely bedfellows (in a literary sense) are the corner pieces of my jigsaw.
I've been researching Pagan ladies... which has been absolutely fascinating, not least because there is a pattern of similarities which includes psychic gifts and the ability to dowse. Also, weather which is a bit of a work in progress, but it helps that I am a member of the Cloud Appreciation Society. My third subject is British police-cars of the 1990's.
In the past, I've posted about my love of lists and of pinning down what is about my hero and heroine's person. I cannot make use of the fact that modern British police fleets include a discreet van that contains a toilet for the comfort of modern officers who may have to spend six hours at the scene of a motorway accident. However, the information that some patrol cars carry a dog catcher set my mind racing in a whole new, and twisted direction for my next alien romance.
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Lizard Overlords
Could the remake of the vintage TV series "V" about reptilian extraterrestrials invading Earth in the guise of benevolent humanoids, which premiered this week, actually be a covert warning? Maybe this program is trying to alert us to the ancient, worldwide conspiracy of our secret lizard overlords, psychic-vampire alien reptiles who lurk among us after withdrawing (literally) underground. By all accounts, this complex of beliefs is serious, not a joke. Here's a website:
Reptilian Agenda
Now, I enjoy a solid, multilayered "theory of everything" -- for instance, the combination of demons, witches, werewolves, and vampires in the Homo lycanthropus species of Jack Williamson's classic DARKER THAN YOU THINK. In that novel these pseudo-human beings have been preying on us since prehistoric times and are responsible for all the evil that has plagued the human race. I adapted a section of my book DIFFERENT BLOOD: THE VAMPIRE AS ALIEN into an article about Williamson's novel. It's online in issue 4 of the JOURNAL OF DRACULA STUDIES:
Journal of Dracula Studies
Come to think of it, one form taken by Williamson's "witch-men" is a dragon-like winged lizard. Maybe Williamson was already trying to warn us in 1940?
The trouble with most real-world, allegedly factual conspiracy theories, unfortunately, is that they're not only implausible but *dull.* Shapeshifting, humanoid, energy-vampirizing, super-intelligent reptiles controlling us from the shadows are at least interesting! And, as Oz says on BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER upon learning that Sunnydale is infested with vampires, "It explains a lot."
Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt
Reptilian Agenda
Now, I enjoy a solid, multilayered "theory of everything" -- for instance, the combination of demons, witches, werewolves, and vampires in the Homo lycanthropus species of Jack Williamson's classic DARKER THAN YOU THINK. In that novel these pseudo-human beings have been preying on us since prehistoric times and are responsible for all the evil that has plagued the human race. I adapted a section of my book DIFFERENT BLOOD: THE VAMPIRE AS ALIEN into an article about Williamson's novel. It's online in issue 4 of the JOURNAL OF DRACULA STUDIES:
Journal of Dracula Studies
Come to think of it, one form taken by Williamson's "witch-men" is a dragon-like winged lizard. Maybe Williamson was already trying to warn us in 1940?
The trouble with most real-world, allegedly factual conspiracy theories, unfortunately, is that they're not only implausible but *dull.* Shapeshifting, humanoid, energy-vampirizing, super-intelligent reptiles controlling us from the shadows are at least interesting! And, as Oz says on BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER upon learning that Sunnydale is infested with vampires, "It explains a lot."
Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
RION
It's that time again. RION the second book in the Pendragon Legacy series will be hitting the stores at the end of November. So if you haven't read your copy of Lucan yet, please catch up. :)
Now I'd post the cover here but for some reason blogger is turning the image strange colors. What is up with that???
RION
The Pendragon Legacy #2
Mass Market Paperback
ISBN-10: 0446543322
ISBN-13: 978-0446543323
Publisher: Forever (Grand Central Publishing)
Pub. Date: December 2009 (11-24-09)
POWER IN THEIR PASSION
Marisa Rourke is a beautiful, fearless telepath who tames dragonshapers on Earth. Rion is a tall, dark, and sexy space explorer whose home planet is a galaxy away. The attraction between them is undeniable, but Rion is hiding a desperate secret that will change Marisa's life forever.
DANGER IN THEIR TOUCH
Marisa's gift is the only way Rion can communicate with his people, enslaved by a powerful enemy. He knows that kidnapping her is wrong, but saving his planet is worth sparking the fiery clairvoyant's fury. Yet hotter-and more explosive-is the psychic bond growing between Marisa and Rion. Could their passion be the key to freeing Rion's people? Only if he and Marisa can discover how to channel their desire . . . before a vicious enemy destroys them all.
Read an excerpt at www.susankearney.com
Now I'd post the cover here but for some reason blogger is turning the image strange colors. What is up with that???
RION
The Pendragon Legacy #2
Mass Market Paperback
ISBN-10: 0446543322
ISBN-13: 978-0446543323
Publisher: Forever (Grand Central Publishing)
Pub. Date: December 2009 (11-24-09)
POWER IN THEIR PASSION
Marisa Rourke is a beautiful, fearless telepath who tames dragonshapers on Earth. Rion is a tall, dark, and sexy space explorer whose home planet is a galaxy away. The attraction between them is undeniable, but Rion is hiding a desperate secret that will change Marisa's life forever.
DANGER IN THEIR TOUCH
Marisa's gift is the only way Rion can communicate with his people, enslaved by a powerful enemy. He knows that kidnapping her is wrong, but saving his planet is worth sparking the fiery clairvoyant's fury. Yet hotter-and more explosive-is the psychic bond growing between Marisa and Rion. Could their passion be the key to freeing Rion's people? Only if he and Marisa can discover how to channel their desire . . . before a vicious enemy destroys them all.
Read an excerpt at www.susankearney.com
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
DoubleBlind by Ann Aquirre
This is not so much a "review" as an exploration of a significant development in the SFR field.
I do intend to review Doubleblind by Ann Aguirre and it's a 5-star read if you overlook a couple of small things that irk me (matters of taste, not quality)
- see my post on Quality
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/7-proofing-steps-for-quality-writing.html
Since I now have 3 titles of my own available on Kindle (The Dushau Trilogy), I've taken a sudden interest in Amazon again.
I don't understand that place as well as I once did, but I'm learning fascinating things about how they're growing, building independent sections then linked them in a crazy-quilt.
I found that Linnea Sinclair apparently started using the tag sfr and when I added that tag to a couple books, I suddenly found myself looking at a Community for SFR. (color me perplexed)
Tags? Something changed. I'd always ignored tags. What are they for, anyway?
So I started adding the tag "Jacqueline Lichtenberg" to some of my own books (haven't finished that yet) and suddenly found myself staring at a "Jacqueline Lichtenberg Community" -- huh?
OK, well, it had no posts in it so I wrote one. *shrug*
Then I went on poking around trying to trace the connections (there aren't many or even any!) between the Kindle Editions and print books.
The Dushau Trilogy Kindle edition is linked into a print edition page, but there are several print edition pages for each book.
The other pages are about copies from used book & collector jobbers often without the cover image, and no link to the Kindle edition on those separate pages. Most people shopping for Dushau won't know it has a Kindle edition.
When a listing for a used copy gets deleted (probably because the jobber sold all copies in stock), the reviews posted to that particular page apparently get deleted by Amazon.
The Dushau Trilogy has had many more reviews posted than are now showing, but somehow Kindle has let the remaining ones onto the Kindle edition pages.
Then on the Sime~Gen fan List, I discovered from a Kindle owner (I don't have one) that people can search for books by number of reviews listing it as whatever # of stars. Dushau would be closer to the top if the reviews hadn't been trashed by Amazon. *hmmmm*
So I went poking around again, and dropping the tag "Jacqueline Lichtenberg" on books by me. And on one of the pages, I found out that people who had bought that book by me (I don't recall which one) had also bought Doubleblind by Ann Aguirre.
What a coincidence!
If you've read my posts on Tarot you'll see that I treat "coincidence" more seriously than most people.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/12/10-pentacles-cake-comes-out-of-oven.html
You see, I was just finishing reading Doubleblind, and when I saw Amazon associate the two with a "readers who bought this bought that." But because I'd been studying Doubleblind I understood how ingenius the amazon.com algorithm has become.
Usually, the "readers who bought" suggestions that I see do make some sense. There are vast similarities. I can see it most clearly when readers who've bought a novel I wrote (and know the mechanism of) have also bought a novel I've read. But rarely has the similarity shouted out at me like this one.
Amazon is getting better at associating apparently unrelated works, and that may be because of all the tedious effort put in by readers to rate books and group them into communities by tags.
This development -- computers associating and grouping ART -- is extremely significant, perhaps in all the history of mankind.
It was the potential that originally attracted me to Amazon, but at first launch, Amazon worked in a very clunky way, putting things together that don't belong together.
I was disappointed when Amazon branched out into general merchandizing and then started merchandizing books (getting publishers to pay extra to get a title featured or tossed into your face whether you like that kind of stuff or not). But they lost tons of money the first 5 years or so and only now are turning a profit, mostly based on that ingenius and innovative algorithm and its modern derivatives.
What's disappointing is not that they're merchandising books, but that in order to be profitable, they must merchandise rather than concentrate wholly on grouping works of Art.
In that context, my astonishment at finding Aguirre's Doubleblind associated with my novels may make more sense. And it may be the "tags" feature, or some additional algorithm behind the tags (this new Cloud Computing concept I discussed in some of my Web 2.0 posts) that did the trick. But something changed on Amazon.
There really is a texture in Aguirre's writing which is characteristic of what I like to read -- which has always been what I like to write.
It's very hard to pin down or articulate, but Doubleblind held my attention despite a couple of irksome traits. It's written in the awkward and distasteful(to me) first person present tense instead of first person past. First person present is used to disguise the artsy-fartsy shallowness of "literary" writing, not in serious storytelling. (see? I have a prejudice. How sad.)
But there are some good techniques in Doubleblind. The narration POV stays steady in the woman's head the whole book through, and she's the more or less sane one while the man she's determined to rescue/cure/love is pretty much flipped-out during most of the book. She knows she loves the sane version of this guy.
I dislike stories told from the POV of an insane person, but this novel has a big story to tell that is HIS story. Aguirre very cleverly gets at his story through her story. It's a well controlled, and well structured narrative.
I will include Doubleblind in my professional review column.
It's part of a series (everything is these days), and I do vaguely recall reading one of the previous novels, but this one reads just fine as a stand-alone. That's a difficult trick to pull off.
It has another awkward structural quirk, but one that I've used myself.
Aguirre inserts communications between people scattered around the galaxy, communications that the main POV character, Sirantha Jax, does not know about and which telegraph that her current mission may become much more complicated very soon now.
This is a device that I have seen used much better than this, and one that I have used with the awareness that readers will SKIP reading the insertions except maybe on re-reading.
Now here's something that happened to this book in production which is not Aguirre's fault or responsibility.
The insertions of "emails" flying around the galaxy are printed in such tiny print with such a thin font that I literally couldn't read them. There was a time when I could read that small fine print without difficulty, and many readers won't have a problem with it.
But this is one of those book-design quirks that may irk readers. It could put off some readers who will report (on blogs or Amazon communities) that they didn't enjoy the book, but they won't say why because they don't know why. (Really - not all readers know why they like or don't like a book! And many of those don't care why!)
The tiny print on the message inserts probably happened because the book designer ran out of space because they inserted a chapter of Aguirre's next book at the end, leaving no blank pages or author comments for the final folio.
That will be another book in a series I really like, the Corine Solomon Urban Fantasy series. This one is due out in April 2010 and is titled Hell Fire. It's about a magic worker and her sidekick who has a wild talent, and I love the Relationship between them.
It would be interesting to discover if those message insertions in Doubleblind were requested by the editor because the surprise ending didn't track without them, or if Aguirre planned it that way, or if she used the inserts to avoid changing point of view, or to make the book shorter. Or maybe she had to make the book longer? Or maybe she just wrote them to keep us advised on developments with characters we're going to get back to in a sequel and was just hoping to get away with it as a teaser to sell the next book.
At any rate, I would advise readers to get Doubleblind in the e-book or Kindle or Nook edition so you can adjust the print size to suit you. I found even the bulk of the text to be on the small side.
That should tell you something. I didn't have to squint my way all the way through the novel, you know.
Readers often attribute to author's choice what must rightfully be accounted for by publisher's choice or demands or by an author's attempt to comply with commercial requirements (such as how do I get readers to wait for my next book in this series?).
These are questions that readers need to learn to consider before "blaming" an author for something they don't like about a book.
The same is true of feature films and especially TV Series episodes. To get the thing OUT at all, it is often necessary to do things that distort the art. So it's worth a beginner's while to invest time in mastering craft skills that can solve the mechanical production problems in such a way that the art does not become distorted.
Now why did Ann Aguirre's Doubleblind come up as recommended to those who like my books? (or one could hope, vice versa)
It's this Web 2.0 thing that I've been discussing in some of my posts.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html
Amazon started collecting information about what readers like and want and milling it through their proprietary computer program. Others have imitated, but can't keep up with Amazon's innovation rate.
That's partly because Amazon started out tremendously well FUNDED. But that's not the only reason. Some other startups of that era are long gone, and of course Microsoft started on a shoestring.
When the whole era of interactivity with web visitors burst into high gear with Web 2.0 -- video, blogging, social networking, connecting web visitors not just with the purveyor but with each other -- Amazon was uniquely positioned to take advantage of the new web-savvy customer who was comfortable giving up personal information and asserting matters of taste in a public forum.
Amazon was ahead of the changes in the book-buying customer base, and ahead of changes in the general web-customer base. They even cater to the individual merchant providing a platform on which others sell things. Amazon gets all that cusomter information to mill over.
So far they've guessed correctly about the direction of customer behavior.
While I was writing this, Linnea Sinclair posted a note on my previous blog entry here pointing out how commercial writers, genre fiction writers, must LISTEN to their readers.
What Amazon has done (and others have copied) is LISTEN to book buyers.
That's why their computer associated Aguirre with Lichtenberg. It may have something very simple behind it - or something much more sophisticated than I can understand. That "tag cloud" thing may turn out to be the most powerful artist's tool yet invented.
Other book sellers - maybe e-book publishers? - may do what Amazon has done, and get AHEAD of where the "public" is going with this interactivity thing.
I suspect in that "tag cloud" instrument Google and Amazon are using, we will find the key to the next step in SFR, and the Romance genre in general. I have a lot more to say on the shifting sex-roles and sexual identity, and in general the "battle of the sexes" and Pluto's influence on our society, but that has to wait for next week.
There are ramifications here that I don't understand yet and so can't explain to you. Very likely, some readers of this blog entry already see the shape of the future to come.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.jacquelinelichtenberg.com
I do intend to review Doubleblind by Ann Aguirre and it's a 5-star read if you overlook a couple of small things that irk me (matters of taste, not quality)
- see my post on Quality
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/7-proofing-steps-for-quality-writing.html
Since I now have 3 titles of my own available on Kindle (The Dushau Trilogy), I've taken a sudden interest in Amazon again.
I don't understand that place as well as I once did, but I'm learning fascinating things about how they're growing, building independent sections then linked them in a crazy-quilt.
I found that Linnea Sinclair apparently started using the tag sfr and when I added that tag to a couple books, I suddenly found myself looking at a Community for SFR. (color me perplexed)
Tags? Something changed. I'd always ignored tags. What are they for, anyway?
So I started adding the tag "Jacqueline Lichtenberg" to some of my own books (haven't finished that yet) and suddenly found myself staring at a "Jacqueline Lichtenberg Community" -- huh?
OK, well, it had no posts in it so I wrote one. *shrug*
Then I went on poking around trying to trace the connections (there aren't many or even any!) between the Kindle Editions and print books.
The Dushau Trilogy Kindle edition is linked into a print edition page, but there are several print edition pages for each book.
The other pages are about copies from used book & collector jobbers often without the cover image, and no link to the Kindle edition on those separate pages. Most people shopping for Dushau won't know it has a Kindle edition.
When a listing for a used copy gets deleted (probably because the jobber sold all copies in stock), the reviews posted to that particular page apparently get deleted by Amazon.
The Dushau Trilogy has had many more reviews posted than are now showing, but somehow Kindle has let the remaining ones onto the Kindle edition pages.
Then on the Sime~Gen fan List, I discovered from a Kindle owner (I don't have one) that people can search for books by number of reviews listing it as whatever # of stars. Dushau would be closer to the top if the reviews hadn't been trashed by Amazon. *hmmmm*
So I went poking around again, and dropping the tag "Jacqueline Lichtenberg" on books by me. And on one of the pages, I found out that people who had bought that book by me (I don't recall which one) had also bought Doubleblind by Ann Aguirre.
What a coincidence!
If you've read my posts on Tarot you'll see that I treat "coincidence" more seriously than most people.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/12/10-pentacles-cake-comes-out-of-oven.html
You see, I was just finishing reading Doubleblind, and when I saw Amazon associate the two with a "readers who bought this bought that." But because I'd been studying Doubleblind I understood how ingenius the amazon.com algorithm has become.
Usually, the "readers who bought" suggestions that I see do make some sense. There are vast similarities. I can see it most clearly when readers who've bought a novel I wrote (and know the mechanism of) have also bought a novel I've read. But rarely has the similarity shouted out at me like this one.
Amazon is getting better at associating apparently unrelated works, and that may be because of all the tedious effort put in by readers to rate books and group them into communities by tags.
This development -- computers associating and grouping ART -- is extremely significant, perhaps in all the history of mankind.
It was the potential that originally attracted me to Amazon, but at first launch, Amazon worked in a very clunky way, putting things together that don't belong together.
I was disappointed when Amazon branched out into general merchandizing and then started merchandizing books (getting publishers to pay extra to get a title featured or tossed into your face whether you like that kind of stuff or not). But they lost tons of money the first 5 years or so and only now are turning a profit, mostly based on that ingenius and innovative algorithm and its modern derivatives.
What's disappointing is not that they're merchandising books, but that in order to be profitable, they must merchandise rather than concentrate wholly on grouping works of Art.
In that context, my astonishment at finding Aguirre's Doubleblind associated with my novels may make more sense. And it may be the "tags" feature, or some additional algorithm behind the tags (this new Cloud Computing concept I discussed in some of my Web 2.0 posts) that did the trick. But something changed on Amazon.
There really is a texture in Aguirre's writing which is characteristic of what I like to read -- which has always been what I like to write.
It's very hard to pin down or articulate, but Doubleblind held my attention despite a couple of irksome traits. It's written in the awkward and distasteful(to me) first person present tense instead of first person past. First person present is used to disguise the artsy-fartsy shallowness of "literary" writing, not in serious storytelling. (see? I have a prejudice. How sad.)
But there are some good techniques in Doubleblind. The narration POV stays steady in the woman's head the whole book through, and she's the more or less sane one while the man she's determined to rescue/cure/love is pretty much flipped-out during most of the book. She knows she loves the sane version of this guy.
I dislike stories told from the POV of an insane person, but this novel has a big story to tell that is HIS story. Aguirre very cleverly gets at his story through her story. It's a well controlled, and well structured narrative.
I will include Doubleblind in my professional review column.
It's part of a series (everything is these days), and I do vaguely recall reading one of the previous novels, but this one reads just fine as a stand-alone. That's a difficult trick to pull off.
It has another awkward structural quirk, but one that I've used myself.
Aguirre inserts communications between people scattered around the galaxy, communications that the main POV character, Sirantha Jax, does not know about and which telegraph that her current mission may become much more complicated very soon now.
This is a device that I have seen used much better than this, and one that I have used with the awareness that readers will SKIP reading the insertions except maybe on re-reading.
Now here's something that happened to this book in production which is not Aguirre's fault or responsibility.
The insertions of "emails" flying around the galaxy are printed in such tiny print with such a thin font that I literally couldn't read them. There was a time when I could read that small fine print without difficulty, and many readers won't have a problem with it.
But this is one of those book-design quirks that may irk readers. It could put off some readers who will report (on blogs or Amazon communities) that they didn't enjoy the book, but they won't say why because they don't know why. (Really - not all readers know why they like or don't like a book! And many of those don't care why!)
The tiny print on the message inserts probably happened because the book designer ran out of space because they inserted a chapter of Aguirre's next book at the end, leaving no blank pages or author comments for the final folio.
That will be another book in a series I really like, the Corine Solomon Urban Fantasy series. This one is due out in April 2010 and is titled Hell Fire. It's about a magic worker and her sidekick who has a wild talent, and I love the Relationship between them.
It would be interesting to discover if those message insertions in Doubleblind were requested by the editor because the surprise ending didn't track without them, or if Aguirre planned it that way, or if she used the inserts to avoid changing point of view, or to make the book shorter. Or maybe she had to make the book longer? Or maybe she just wrote them to keep us advised on developments with characters we're going to get back to in a sequel and was just hoping to get away with it as a teaser to sell the next book.
At any rate, I would advise readers to get Doubleblind in the e-book or Kindle or Nook edition so you can adjust the print size to suit you. I found even the bulk of the text to be on the small side.
That should tell you something. I didn't have to squint my way all the way through the novel, you know.
Readers often attribute to author's choice what must rightfully be accounted for by publisher's choice or demands or by an author's attempt to comply with commercial requirements (such as how do I get readers to wait for my next book in this series?).
These are questions that readers need to learn to consider before "blaming" an author for something they don't like about a book.
The same is true of feature films and especially TV Series episodes. To get the thing OUT at all, it is often necessary to do things that distort the art. So it's worth a beginner's while to invest time in mastering craft skills that can solve the mechanical production problems in such a way that the art does not become distorted.
Now why did Ann Aguirre's Doubleblind come up as recommended to those who like my books? (or one could hope, vice versa)
It's this Web 2.0 thing that I've been discussing in some of my posts.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html
Amazon started collecting information about what readers like and want and milling it through their proprietary computer program. Others have imitated, but can't keep up with Amazon's innovation rate.
That's partly because Amazon started out tremendously well FUNDED. But that's not the only reason. Some other startups of that era are long gone, and of course Microsoft started on a shoestring.
When the whole era of interactivity with web visitors burst into high gear with Web 2.0 -- video, blogging, social networking, connecting web visitors not just with the purveyor but with each other -- Amazon was uniquely positioned to take advantage of the new web-savvy customer who was comfortable giving up personal information and asserting matters of taste in a public forum.
Amazon was ahead of the changes in the book-buying customer base, and ahead of changes in the general web-customer base. They even cater to the individual merchant providing a platform on which others sell things. Amazon gets all that cusomter information to mill over.
So far they've guessed correctly about the direction of customer behavior.
While I was writing this, Linnea Sinclair posted a note on my previous blog entry here pointing out how commercial writers, genre fiction writers, must LISTEN to their readers.
What Amazon has done (and others have copied) is LISTEN to book buyers.
That's why their computer associated Aguirre with Lichtenberg. It may have something very simple behind it - or something much more sophisticated than I can understand. That "tag cloud" thing may turn out to be the most powerful artist's tool yet invented.
Other book sellers - maybe e-book publishers? - may do what Amazon has done, and get AHEAD of where the "public" is going with this interactivity thing.
I suspect in that "tag cloud" instrument Google and Amazon are using, we will find the key to the next step in SFR, and the Romance genre in general. I have a lot more to say on the shifting sex-roles and sexual identity, and in general the "battle of the sexes" and Pluto's influence on our society, but that has to wait for next week.
There are ramifications here that I don't understand yet and so can't explain to you. Very likely, some readers of this blog entry already see the shape of the future to come.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Whither Copyright?
It's November the first, and I am doing NaNoWriMo... therefore, I will be brief here. (And loquacious there.)
Announcement and Plug:
On November 3rd (Tuesday) I will be discussing the finer points of the law regarding intellectual property rights of artists and content creators, fair use, first sale doctrine, musicians and more on my 10.00 am (Eastern Time) radio show on http://internetvoicesradio.com/CrazyTuesday
-->
Useful urls
http://www.copyrightalliance.org
http://www.copyrightalliance.org/letter
A Preannouncement and another Plug:
Please notice the sidebar. This blog is participating with Heather Massey of The Galaxy Express in a massive, multi-blog promotion of our genre (science fiction romance) on December 6th. So far, Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Linnea Sinclair, Margaret L Carter, Susan Kearney, Susan Sizemore, and yours truly have pledged either books or ebooks as prizes for those who visit our blog on 12/06/2009.
No Trick: A Treat For Our Readers (one day late for Halloween)
There's strong demand for accessible, convenient, reader-friendly ways for readers to discover new authors without having to go on a scavenger hunt all over the internet, or to play virtual lucky dip
on the online bookseller sites.
Therefore, with the help of my friends, I have compiled, and Charlotte Boyett-Compo has formatted
two samplers which we are proud to call The Best Of Futuristic, Fantasy and Paranormal Authors. If it's not actually the best it may well be one of the first. And it's free.
http://www.freado.com/book/4645/The-Best-of-Futuristic,-Fantasy,-and-ParaNormal-Authors-#1
http://www.freado.com/book/4647/The-Best-of-Futuristic,-Fantasy,-and-ParaNormal-Authors-#2
Authors include: Linnea Sinclair, Jade Lee, Joy Nash, Deborah Macgillivray, Susan Kearney, Susan Grant, Cathy Spangler, Kathleen Nance, Charlee Compo, Rowena Cherry, Dawn Thompson, Nina Bangs, Cindy Spencer Pape, C.L. Wilson, Laurel Bradley... and many more.
For those not familiar with the Book Buzzr site:
Click the link
Wait for the yellow loading bar to do its thing
Scroll over to the far right to "Read Now" (in oxblood red)
Click that (the cover art will shift to the right, there will be a central crease down the middle, the left side will be blank)
Alternatively, you can click on "Read Now" in the yellow bar.
It is not such a good idea to click on the front page of the book "to zoom" as you will get formatting bars in front of your text.
Next, look at your own desktop browser toolbar.
Click on View. Then on Zoom. Then on Zoom In.
You can turn the pages using the video/tape style solid arrow.
Enjoy.
Please feel free to snag the urls and share them (but always in their entirity, please)
Maybe one can trick an ancient, fantasy or futuristic genie back into his or her bottle, but the silicon chips of time may be running out for artists and creators of copyright protected materials.
And a Warning:
I was amused and flattered to receive a Google Alert for my name, pointing me to a download request for one of my paperbacks on a site where members are known to share e-books.
However, I am not so amused to see that a link (on a blue field) has been posted which is only visible for visitors to the site who are NOT members. I'm told that members of the site do not see that link. Therefore, my friends should know that the link is probably malicious or else a fraud.
/request/14460/0/Knight%27s_Fork_by_Rowena_Cherry/?sms_ss=blogger">XXX - Knight's Fork by Rowena Cherry download request
Now... I'm going back to NaNoWriMo where I am writing "Devil" Deverill's come-uppance. My chess title for this one is "Grand Fork".
Rowena Cherry
SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/
Announcement and Plug:
On November 3rd (Tuesday) I will be discussing the finer points of the law regarding intellectual property rights of artists and content creators, fair use, first sale doctrine, musicians and more on my 10.00 am (Eastern Time) radio show on http://internetvoicesradio.com/CrazyTuesday
COPYRIGHT: WHAT'S RIGHT AND WHAT IS NOT RIGHT?
Patrick Ross and Lucinda Dugger of the Copyright Alliance.org will explain why you should be concerned about authors' and artists' rights.Brenna Lyons, EPIC president; Marci Baun, Publisher Wild Child Publishing, in person and other authors via texting will share common misconceptions and some horror stories about copyright infringement.
Useful urls
http://www.copyrightalliance.org
http://www.copyrightalliance.org/letter
A Preannouncement and another Plug:
Please notice the sidebar. This blog is participating with Heather Massey of The Galaxy Express in a massive, multi-blog promotion of our genre (science fiction romance) on December 6th. So far, Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Linnea Sinclair, Margaret L Carter, Susan Kearney, Susan Sizemore, and yours truly have pledged either books or ebooks as prizes for those who visit our blog on 12/06/2009.
No Trick: A Treat For Our Readers (one day late for Halloween)
There's strong demand for accessible, convenient, reader-friendly ways for readers to discover new authors without having to go on a scavenger hunt all over the internet, or to play virtual lucky dip
on the online bookseller sites.
Therefore, with the help of my friends, I have compiled, and Charlotte Boyett-Compo has formatted
two samplers which we are proud to call The Best Of Futuristic, Fantasy and Paranormal Authors. If it's not actually the best it may well be one of the first. And it's free.
http://www.freado.com/book/4645/The-Best-of-Futuristic,-Fantasy,-and-ParaNormal-Authors-#1
http://www.freado.com/book/4647/The-Best-of-Futuristic,-Fantasy,-and-ParaNormal-Authors-#2
Authors include: Linnea Sinclair, Jade Lee, Joy Nash, Deborah Macgillivray, Susan Kearney, Susan Grant, Cathy Spangler, Kathleen Nance, Charlee Compo, Rowena Cherry, Dawn Thompson, Nina Bangs, Cindy Spencer Pape, C.L. Wilson, Laurel Bradley... and many more.
For those not familiar with the Book Buzzr site:
Click the link
Wait for the yellow loading bar to do its thing
Scroll over to the far right to "Read Now" (in oxblood red)
Click that (the cover art will shift to the right, there will be a central crease down the middle, the left side will be blank)
Alternatively, you can click on "Read Now" in the yellow bar.
It is not such a good idea to click on the front page of the book "to zoom" as you will get formatting bars in front of your text.
Next, look at your own desktop browser toolbar.
Click on View. Then on Zoom. Then on Zoom In.
You can turn the pages using the video/tape style solid arrow.
Enjoy.
Please feel free to snag the urls and share them (but always in their entirity, please)
Maybe one can trick an ancient, fantasy or futuristic genie back into his or her bottle, but the silicon chips of time may be running out for artists and creators of copyright protected materials.
And a Warning:
I was amused and flattered to receive a Google Alert for my name, pointing me to a download request for one of my paperbacks on a site where members are known to share e-books.
However, I am not so amused to see that a link (on a blue field) has been posted which is only visible for visitors to the site who are NOT members. I'm told that members of the site do not see that link. Therefore, my friends should know that the link is probably malicious or else a fraud.
/request/14460/0/Knight%27s_Fork_by_Rowena_Cherry/?sms_ss=blogger">XXX - Knight's Fork by Rowena Cherry download request
please help,I need this book and others by the same authorWhen the Queen Consort of the Volnoth asks him to father her child, not realizing that he is the son of her greatest enemy and that he has taken ...
Now... I'm going back to NaNoWriMo where I am writing "Devil" Deverill's come-uppance. My chess title for this one is "Grand Fork".
Rowena Cherry
SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Going to College in Virtual Reality
At one of my schools, the University of Hawaii, some professors are holding classes in replicas of college settings in the Second Life online environment. The University of Hawaii island in Second Life includes four buildings around a courtyard with a view of the ocean, “as well as two floating skydecks and a treehouse.” Here’s an article, with a video:
Malamalama
My mind is definitely boggled. I’m amazed at how close we’ve come—in the short time the Internet has existed—to the virtual worlds we read about in science fiction. There’s a Globe Theatre island where full-length Shakespeare plays are presented. And I’ve heard of authors doing readings in Second Life, an idea that sounds really cool. The opportunities sound practically boundless (for instance, a kind of freedom for disabled people that they can’t attain in the physical world). On the other hand, interacting in virtual space is open only to the affluent; in addition to buying the equipment, a user has to pay real money for online resources. If such a realm of interaction eventually becomes commonplace, I can conceive of it as yet another barrier between the haves and have-nots.
I’ve never entered Second Life myself. If anyone here has, please tell us about the experience. For instance, how much does meeting someone in the virtual world feel like meeting a person in real life?
Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt
Malamalama
My mind is definitely boggled. I’m amazed at how close we’ve come—in the short time the Internet has existed—to the virtual worlds we read about in science fiction. There’s a Globe Theatre island where full-length Shakespeare plays are presented. And I’ve heard of authors doing readings in Second Life, an idea that sounds really cool. The opportunities sound practically boundless (for instance, a kind of freedom for disabled people that they can’t attain in the physical world). On the other hand, interacting in virtual space is open only to the affluent; in addition to buying the equipment, a user has to pay real money for online resources. If such a realm of interaction eventually becomes commonplace, I can conceive of it as yet another barrier between the haves and have-nots.
I’ve never entered Second Life myself. If anyone here has, please tell us about the experience. For instance, how much does meeting someone in the virtual world feel like meeting a person in real life?
Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
On the road
Hi All,
I've been out to San Diego to see my daughter. Then on a road trip from Florida up to Pennsylvania. And of course along the way I stopped in lots of bookstores, left bookmarks and signed stock. And I noticed that stores tend to shelve my books everywhere. It's almost as if aliens tried to see how many different places they could hide my books. I found copies of Lucan on new release tables, shelved under romance, under new books, on end caps, under the cash register and ever on the center isle turning styles. It was actually quite an education, but you know it's really hard to be an author. When I saw copies of my books on the shelves i feared the book wasn't doing well. When I saw no copies, I was worried that we didn't have enough on the shelves. So either way i tend to worry.
I returned home to find out that RION, my December book and the second in the Pendragon legacy series received a 4 1/2 stars from RT book review. "The review calls Pendragon a “sizzling series,” ending with, “Leave it to Kearney to build a passionate relationship and combine it with political drama and adventure!”
So I hope that those of you who enjoyed Lucan will preorder Rion to make sure you get a copy. Luckily Grand Central Publishing increased the number of books out there.
While on the trip we went to Hershey Pa. And of course we had to tour the chocolate factory. Now are you wondering what chocolate has to do with books? Well chocolate is an essential writer's tool--as necessary for creating great stories as my computer.
The pictures above were taken at a book signing, of me and my husband at a 3-d movie, very cool, and at the Hershey facility. Even the traffic lights in Hershey are in the shape of kisses. :)
Enjoy,
Susan Kearney
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
7 Proofing Steps For Quality Writing
How could a writer possibly decide whether their own story or even article has a low, medium, or high "quality?"
"Quality" is a word, and concept that means something different to each person who uses it, and in each context where you find it.
"Quality" essentially means "it feels good to me, so it doesn't matter what you like."
But "Quality" is also a comparison measure to other things "like" this one -- whatever it is; a sofa, a dress, a silk neck tie, a painting, a story.
The problem with applying the word "Quality" to writing is that writing is an amalgam of Craft and Art.
Art does have some objective parameters to it, but different people respond to or care about different parameters. You really can't assign an objective measure to the "Quality" of Art.
Craft, however, is almost entirely objective, and the measure of "Quality" in craftsmanship has two dimensions.
1) Does the craftsmanship produce a seamless, smooth, useful product? (i.e. if it's a plumbing pipe, does it hold water? If it's a story, does it deliver an emotional punch, intellectual high or spiritual journey?)
2) Does the craftsmanship of this object compare well to the craftsman of similar objects? (i.e. does this pipe hold water better than that pipe? Does this story deliver a bigger punch than that story?)
The problem in judging "Quality" is that readers, or end-users of any product, measure "quality" by different standards than the originator of the object -- or the purveyor (in writing, that's the publisher).
For a writer, "Quality" means, "Does it say what I wanted to say?"
For a publisher, "Quality" means, "Does it have a huge market, bigger than anything else like it?"
For a reader, "Quality" means, "Does it satisfy me? Is this what I've been wishing for?"
It sounds like an impossible task for a writer (an originator) to look at the brand new product and judge whether the reader, end-user, will see it as a "Quality" item.
And in a way it is, and in a way it's not that hard because there are a few objective measures of quality in writing.
The writer is half-way-born-editor, just as most editors have some writing in them.
Editors, however, are not publishers. A publisher is someone who is in the business of peddling a product to a market. An editor is in the business of finding or generating product the publisher can peddle at a profit.
We've discussed writing as a business, and you've read many other blogs here and elsewhere about self-publishing, the fastest growing segment of publishing.
But there's something going on at YouTube and on the Web 2.0 sites like it that you need to understand in order to apply the objective measures of quality to your work AT A PROFIT.
This article explains where a lot of the most popular videos on YouTube are coming from, who makes them, and what their profit margin is, and why that profit margin is so slim -- and this article also offers a way for writers and videographers to make a little money on the side, provided they understand this "Quality" issue I'm discussing here.
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_demandmedia
Demand Media is doing what the Dime Novel did for the Wild West. But Demand Media has developed an algorithm to data-mine all the searches people do on google etc. They buy the search terms people put in from the search engine company, then sift and arrange the terms to generate topics of interest to lots of people at any given time.
Then they hire a videographer or writer to do a video or article explaining the topic. They have a web page where they post topics they want material on. They pay almost nothing, but they do pay writers. They're a volume shop.
The videographers and writers doing this work are often professionals who have worked to the extremely high and demanding specifications of the general media.
But now these craftsmen are learning a new way to look at their trade, and it's a lesson all writers, especially e-book or self-published writers and eventually traditionally published writers have to learn.
Traditional publishing is withdrawing support for writers so that publishers expect writers to fund and execute publicity for themselves. So eventually, traditionally published writers will be in the same boat as self-published writers (or vice-versa).
So read that article in Wired Magazine and think about what it says about the higher "quality" videos produced for much more money, and the business model behind that. Think about what this article implies about the shifting parameters in this world, and what it implies about craft mastery, and objective measures of "Quality."
This article in Wired Magazine is actually describing what used to be the difference between the Hardcover or Trade Paperback and the Mass Market paperback. Writers working in Mass Market had much less time to spend rewriting and polishing. Writers working in Hard Cover were expected to spend ten to a hundred times more time but Mass Market paid more. The trick was to get a Hard Cover into a Mass Market edition to get paid for the extra time spent.
With the $$/hour parameter of the business model dominating all your choices, there are two attitudes you might choose from.
A) It's all shlock so why bother trying so hard?
B) What I do is worth $20 so I have to do it three times an hour in order to live. So how can I produce "Quality" without spending time?
In other words, how do you train your art producing subconscious to spit out words already crafted in a high-quality product (or photograph images that you can clean up pretty good in the time allotted?).
How do you perfect SPEED and ACCURACY in craftsmanship?
The answer is simple and rather horrid to contemplate.
Slow, tedious repetition and self-correction, critical analysis of your own work, refusing to accept the first shlock that comes out, until at last that very first effluent from your subconscious is "Quality" crafted. Training subconscious is like training a puppy.
That's how you get to Carnegie Hall - practice, disciplined practice.
But not practicing your errors, practicing doing it right. The company that the Wired Magazine article is talking about might be a great place to do that practice and get paid for it.
Marion Zimmer Bradley once fed her family by writing True Confessions and Astrology articles for a market very much like the one Wired is describing. She rose to edit the Astrology magazine, too. She often said writing short non-fiction made her a better fiction writer.
Remember what I learned from Alma Hill that "Writing Is A Performing Art" -- and this $20/article concept is a perfect illustration of that fact. To do this at a profit a videographer or writer must PERFORM as if on stage before a live audience.
That's what you're practicing for - a performance.
When you practice writing, think of it as rehearsal. Any mistake you make is part of the permanent impression on your audience. So rehearse until you can perform your story flawlessly, in the time allotted.
That's not degrading your ART -- it's perfecting your craft.
Now, exactly what do you do, as a writer, to self-correct and train your craftsmanship to the point where you produce objectively measurable quality at the drop of a hat (or paypal deposit).
The following tests are for the objective part of story writing, the craft itself. Art is a totally different subject, but some of these tests will turn up flaws in the Art as well. If you find a flaw in your Art, you can choose to cover it up with Craft real-quick-n-dirty, or tear the story apart and re-do the Art from scratch. Choose by remembering the $$/hour parameter and the "rehearse until it's smooth" parameter.
7 points to self-test a novel for "quality"
1) PLOT INTEGRITY - check to make sure what I call the "because-line" actually tracks logically. If YOU think it tracks, ask someone you don't know to read it then ask them questions about why things happened in the novel. To FIX missing links, make sure every event happens BECAUSE OF the initial event. Anything with a very tight PLOT (PLOT = BECAUSE LINE) but very little EXPOSITION will sell somewhere (that's from Robert A. Heinlein).
2) CHARACTER MOTIVATION (i.e. the STORY-LINE which is the sequence of emotional states that leads the main character to change) must be clear to the target readership (not just to you). You have to explain WHY people do things in SHOW rather than TELL -- that WHY is inside the chosen plot events. When a character DOES SOMETHING the world responds with a LOGICAL consequence from which the CHARACTER derives a (possibly illogical but human) LESSON which the CHARACTER tests by doing something different "next time" which CAUSES (plot-line) another logical consequence, until the character has learned his/her lesson (theme=lesson learned)
3) When you've got both these lines whole, complete, transparent, accessible to your target reader, and precisely formulated to the genre that the symbolism belongs to, when everything makes complete sense, REDUCE THE WHOLE THING to an outline (chapter-by-chapter, describe what happens, why, and what it means in just 2 or 3 complete sentences -- this is your sales tool for your pitch). If you can't do that reduction, there's something wrong with the structure. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE NOT VIOLATED A TROPE OF YOUR GENRE (that is the real criteria by which Manhattan Agents and Editors work - trope-trope-trope.) Trope is often the cause of the PACING issue that editors will cite when rejecting. Editors don't know what's wrong or how to fix it. They're not writers. That's your job. Readers expect you to do your job. If you don't, they call the work badly written or low quality.
4) Go back and DELETE 15% of the words, cut-cut-cut, use better words, delete all the adjectives and adverbs, and shift to well-chosen words. Then if necessary add-add-add to get the exact length for the genre. Then delete almost all the EXPOSITION. Take what's left and break it up like a sonic beam breaks up a kidney stone. Pulverize the exposition and sprinkle it here and there in LOGICAL sequence. The trick with exposition is to make the reader curious to know the fact you need to impart -- take about 50 pages to build the curiosity -- meanwhile drive up the suspense until the reader just HAS TO KNOW. Then tell them in a dependent clause buried in the middle of something -- use an oblique reference, nothing "on the nose." Make the reader FIGURE OUT what you want to tell them in exposition. That's a dodge for SHOW DON'T TELL -- make the reader think it's their own idea, not yours. If you do the work for them, they don't have any fun even though you do. Writing is selling FUN, which means you have to give away your fun in return for money. So you don't get to tell. You have to work to induce the reader to figure it out.
5) Send it out to test readers you DON'T KNOW and who don't know you personally (not work-shoppers you see every month- actual people who have no stake in stroking your ego -- yes, building a cadre of such folks you have access to is one thing online networking can do best). Get tech experts in fields you have used to check the facts.
6) NOW - after all that, you polish the text, not just running spell check, but going through the whole MS looking for word-substitution typos, bad sentence structure, wordy constructions "Well, the fact of the matter is that he lied" becomes "Well... he lied." Don't use grammar-check, learn grammar.
7) Yet another test reader, one who knows grammar, punctuation, spelling and reads books from your target publisher in your target genre. (each publishing house has a style sheet dictating grammar, spelling, punctuation). That's your final step - no sense polishing words you're going to delete. In hand-written times, that was known as "making a fair copy." On foolscap.
After doing this 7 step self-test on various projects, you will eventually come to where your test readers aren't finding so many things to fix. With repetition, you start producing things that actually are publishable if not of the highest quality on second or even first draft. First draft is the goal in low-paying markets, and that means you must PERFORM your writing at concert pitch. In higher paying markets, you might run the story through these 7 tests several times and keep perfecting on each draft, raising the "quality."
THE ESSENCE OF STORY IS CONFLICT
Even if you meet the self-test criteria above, you can still attain the level of "badly written" IF THERE IS NO APPARENT CONFLICT.
Likewise, you can attain the label "boring" -- or "I couldn't get through it" -- if there is NO COHERENT THEME that is illustrated by the conflict.
A "story" is a sequence sliced out of a character's life wherein they LEARN A LESSON (your theme) by OVERCOMING OBSTACLES or ATTAINING A GOAL (obstacles and goal generate the plot-line).
If you pick the wrong primary character (lead, star or hero), no matter how well you do the objective mechanics in the 7 point checklist, the art fails and your novel is "badly written" or "low quality."
If you pick the right primary character, BUT start at the wrong place in that character's story, the art fails and your novel is "badly written."
"Quality" is actually NOT TASTE -- it is not mysterious.
That's why slush pile readers, screenplay coverage readers, editors, agents, and reviewers can sort a stack of manuscripts, screenplays, ARCs, or published books very quickly and toss out more than half that don't meet the quality standard necessary.
Here's how it's done. (all beginners think this is unfair and won't work, but it is fair and it does work when done professionally)
1) check first page -- any error of craft, toss the MS
2) check p5 -- if the story-development point (beat) is not there, toss.
3) check the MIDDLE. If the high or low EVENT isn't there, toss.
4) check the END. Compare to beginning and middle. If the final image doesn't RESOLVE the conflict set out on pgs 1-5 - toss without reading the whole thing.
5) check the 1/4 and 3/4 points -- if the plot development is correct on those points, then read the whole thing. (a novel is generally 4 "acts" or "movements" like a 1-hour TV episode, so it's quarter-points you look at; but with a screenplay for a feature film, it's usually 3 acts, so the pages for the beats are different, but the principle is the same.
These 5 checks quickly reveal if the writer has violated the TROPE the professional reader is looking for. If the trope the reader wants isn't there, even if the item is high quality of its type, it isn't worth the professional reader's time ($$/Hour remember? Business model rules supreme.)
So what chance does a writer have of getting through this screening process and having a manuscript read by someone who might pay for it?
Getting through those tests is also a learn-able bit of craft.
Focus on the simple fact that these tests are entirely objective.
Matters of taste and art are judged after the objective craft is judged. And according to that article in Wired Magazine, matters of taste and art are currently much less important than they once were.
Note how the article points out that using this computer algorithm to sift search results for what people want, and then providing exactly what they are searching for is more effective than a room full of professional experts creating topics they think people ought to want.
Soon feature films will be marketed that way, I'm sure, maybe novels first. Remember what Rowena Cherry found in that survey of Romance readers -- half want more sex. Survey replaces art.
The MAJORITY AUDIENCE will soon be conditioned to expect this kind of responsiveness from the media. "Quality" means "what I like." And now people are being mass-conditioned to expect their expectations to be met.
When you take their money for a book but betray expectations -- they have no clue what's wrong, so they say "badly written" and don't waste money on that byline again (and warn off all their blog readers).
A lot of editors either fall in that bewildered category, or simply have no time to waste with "writers" who can't write the required trope in the required time. It's not the editor's job to teach you to write. ($$/hour - remember that. Read that Wired Magazine article carefully.)
I have been tackling ways of explaining these parameters of "well written" stories for a couple of years now (not systematically) on this blog.
One thing Marion Zimmer Bradley taught, I have found to be true -- anyone who can write a literate English sentence can sell fiction. A LOT of my students have done so.
And though the article in Wired Magazine points to Demand Media as something "new" -- it actually isn't new from a writer's point of view. Since the commercialization of the printing press, quick-n-dirty production has been a component of the writer's business model. And as I said above, the Dime Novel, the Mass Market paperback, and now today YouTube videos, are all about $$/hour and professionalism.
Professional writing is not a mystery, it's not arbitrary, it's not a secret. It's not even hard except for the part where you take what your artistic subconscious produces and externalize it.
Failing to externalize your art produces what Marion Zimmer Bradley called "self-indulgent" novels. A particular editor might buy it - but readers will call it "badly written" because they don't know where the failure happened.
Externalizing your art is an entirely different process for each writer, it's idiosyncratic, but something you can teach yourself with the 7 point checklist for "Quality" of craft.
E-pub and self-pub is the ONLY route open to those who can do all these other things on the checklist, but fail to externalize their art, de-personlize it, universalize it.
The best way is to train your subconscious in your genre's trope until it produces fiction pre-configured to fit your market.
That's why professional writers warn neo-writers off "workshops" and posting "fanfic" online. You end up rewarding your subconscious for practicing your mistakes, and you train your subconscious to AVOID EXTERNALIZING. That will doom you to a lot of rewriting once you understand which step you have skipped.
"Quality" is often, alas, proportionate to time spent re-doing and perfecting the craft underlying the art. The ingredients of a quality product are often rare (fine olive oil is "virgin" -- the rest of the press is used for something else). Flawed diamonds are not used in the crown jewels, though they work fine for industrial purposes.
Are you in the business of fine art? Or commercial art? Knowing the difference and the difference in business model, could be the real key to success in your life.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/dushau
"Quality" is a word, and concept that means something different to each person who uses it, and in each context where you find it.
"Quality" essentially means "it feels good to me, so it doesn't matter what you like."
But "Quality" is also a comparison measure to other things "like" this one -- whatever it is; a sofa, a dress, a silk neck tie, a painting, a story.
The problem with applying the word "Quality" to writing is that writing is an amalgam of Craft and Art.
Art does have some objective parameters to it, but different people respond to or care about different parameters. You really can't assign an objective measure to the "Quality" of Art.
Craft, however, is almost entirely objective, and the measure of "Quality" in craftsmanship has two dimensions.
1) Does the craftsmanship produce a seamless, smooth, useful product? (i.e. if it's a plumbing pipe, does it hold water? If it's a story, does it deliver an emotional punch, intellectual high or spiritual journey?)
2) Does the craftsmanship of this object compare well to the craftsman of similar objects? (i.e. does this pipe hold water better than that pipe? Does this story deliver a bigger punch than that story?)
The problem in judging "Quality" is that readers, or end-users of any product, measure "quality" by different standards than the originator of the object -- or the purveyor (in writing, that's the publisher).
For a writer, "Quality" means, "Does it say what I wanted to say?"
For a publisher, "Quality" means, "Does it have a huge market, bigger than anything else like it?"
For a reader, "Quality" means, "Does it satisfy me? Is this what I've been wishing for?"
It sounds like an impossible task for a writer (an originator) to look at the brand new product and judge whether the reader, end-user, will see it as a "Quality" item.
And in a way it is, and in a way it's not that hard because there are a few objective measures of quality in writing.
The writer is half-way-born-editor, just as most editors have some writing in them.
Editors, however, are not publishers. A publisher is someone who is in the business of peddling a product to a market. An editor is in the business of finding or generating product the publisher can peddle at a profit.
We've discussed writing as a business, and you've read many other blogs here and elsewhere about self-publishing, the fastest growing segment of publishing.
But there's something going on at YouTube and on the Web 2.0 sites like it that you need to understand in order to apply the objective measures of quality to your work AT A PROFIT.
This article explains where a lot of the most popular videos on YouTube are coming from, who makes them, and what their profit margin is, and why that profit margin is so slim -- and this article also offers a way for writers and videographers to make a little money on the side, provided they understand this "Quality" issue I'm discussing here.
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_demandmedia
Demand Media is doing what the Dime Novel did for the Wild West. But Demand Media has developed an algorithm to data-mine all the searches people do on google etc. They buy the search terms people put in from the search engine company, then sift and arrange the terms to generate topics of interest to lots of people at any given time.
Then they hire a videographer or writer to do a video or article explaining the topic. They have a web page where they post topics they want material on. They pay almost nothing, but they do pay writers. They're a volume shop.
The videographers and writers doing this work are often professionals who have worked to the extremely high and demanding specifications of the general media.
But now these craftsmen are learning a new way to look at their trade, and it's a lesson all writers, especially e-book or self-published writers and eventually traditionally published writers have to learn.
Traditional publishing is withdrawing support for writers so that publishers expect writers to fund and execute publicity for themselves. So eventually, traditionally published writers will be in the same boat as self-published writers (or vice-versa).
So read that article in Wired Magazine and think about what it says about the higher "quality" videos produced for much more money, and the business model behind that. Think about what this article implies about the shifting parameters in this world, and what it implies about craft mastery, and objective measures of "Quality."
This article in Wired Magazine is actually describing what used to be the difference between the Hardcover or Trade Paperback and the Mass Market paperback. Writers working in Mass Market had much less time to spend rewriting and polishing. Writers working in Hard Cover were expected to spend ten to a hundred times more time but Mass Market paid more. The trick was to get a Hard Cover into a Mass Market edition to get paid for the extra time spent.
With the $$/hour parameter of the business model dominating all your choices, there are two attitudes you might choose from.
A) It's all shlock so why bother trying so hard?
B) What I do is worth $20 so I have to do it three times an hour in order to live. So how can I produce "Quality" without spending time?
In other words, how do you train your art producing subconscious to spit out words already crafted in a high-quality product (or photograph images that you can clean up pretty good in the time allotted?).
How do you perfect SPEED and ACCURACY in craftsmanship?
The answer is simple and rather horrid to contemplate.
Slow, tedious repetition and self-correction, critical analysis of your own work, refusing to accept the first shlock that comes out, until at last that very first effluent from your subconscious is "Quality" crafted. Training subconscious is like training a puppy.
That's how you get to Carnegie Hall - practice, disciplined practice.
But not practicing your errors, practicing doing it right. The company that the Wired Magazine article is talking about might be a great place to do that practice and get paid for it.
Marion Zimmer Bradley once fed her family by writing True Confessions and Astrology articles for a market very much like the one Wired is describing. She rose to edit the Astrology magazine, too. She often said writing short non-fiction made her a better fiction writer.
Remember what I learned from Alma Hill that "Writing Is A Performing Art" -- and this $20/article concept is a perfect illustration of that fact. To do this at a profit a videographer or writer must PERFORM as if on stage before a live audience.
That's what you're practicing for - a performance.
When you practice writing, think of it as rehearsal. Any mistake you make is part of the permanent impression on your audience. So rehearse until you can perform your story flawlessly, in the time allotted.
That's not degrading your ART -- it's perfecting your craft.
Now, exactly what do you do, as a writer, to self-correct and train your craftsmanship to the point where you produce objectively measurable quality at the drop of a hat (or paypal deposit).
The following tests are for the objective part of story writing, the craft itself. Art is a totally different subject, but some of these tests will turn up flaws in the Art as well. If you find a flaw in your Art, you can choose to cover it up with Craft real-quick-n-dirty, or tear the story apart and re-do the Art from scratch. Choose by remembering the $$/hour parameter and the "rehearse until it's smooth" parameter.
7 points to self-test a novel for "quality"
1) PLOT INTEGRITY - check to make sure what I call the "because-line" actually tracks logically. If YOU think it tracks, ask someone you don't know to read it then ask them questions about why things happened in the novel. To FIX missing links, make sure every event happens BECAUSE OF the initial event. Anything with a very tight PLOT (PLOT = BECAUSE LINE) but very little EXPOSITION will sell somewhere (that's from Robert A. Heinlein).
2) CHARACTER MOTIVATION (i.e. the STORY-LINE which is the sequence of emotional states that leads the main character to change) must be clear to the target readership (not just to you). You have to explain WHY people do things in SHOW rather than TELL -- that WHY is inside the chosen plot events. When a character DOES SOMETHING the world responds with a LOGICAL consequence from which the CHARACTER derives a (possibly illogical but human) LESSON which the CHARACTER tests by doing something different "next time" which CAUSES (plot-line) another logical consequence, until the character has learned his/her lesson (theme=lesson learned)
3) When you've got both these lines whole, complete, transparent, accessible to your target reader, and precisely formulated to the genre that the symbolism belongs to, when everything makes complete sense, REDUCE THE WHOLE THING to an outline (chapter-by-chapter, describe what happens, why, and what it means in just 2 or 3 complete sentences -- this is your sales tool for your pitch). If you can't do that reduction, there's something wrong with the structure. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE NOT VIOLATED A TROPE OF YOUR GENRE (that is the real criteria by which Manhattan Agents and Editors work - trope-trope-trope.) Trope is often the cause of the PACING issue that editors will cite when rejecting. Editors don't know what's wrong or how to fix it. They're not writers. That's your job. Readers expect you to do your job. If you don't, they call the work badly written or low quality.
4) Go back and DELETE 15% of the words, cut-cut-cut, use better words, delete all the adjectives and adverbs, and shift to well-chosen words. Then if necessary add-add-add to get the exact length for the genre. Then delete almost all the EXPOSITION. Take what's left and break it up like a sonic beam breaks up a kidney stone. Pulverize the exposition and sprinkle it here and there in LOGICAL sequence. The trick with exposition is to make the reader curious to know the fact you need to impart -- take about 50 pages to build the curiosity -- meanwhile drive up the suspense until the reader just HAS TO KNOW. Then tell them in a dependent clause buried in the middle of something -- use an oblique reference, nothing "on the nose." Make the reader FIGURE OUT what you want to tell them in exposition. That's a dodge for SHOW DON'T TELL -- make the reader think it's their own idea, not yours. If you do the work for them, they don't have any fun even though you do. Writing is selling FUN, which means you have to give away your fun in return for money. So you don't get to tell. You have to work to induce the reader to figure it out.
5) Send it out to test readers you DON'T KNOW and who don't know you personally (not work-shoppers you see every month- actual people who have no stake in stroking your ego -- yes, building a cadre of such folks you have access to is one thing online networking can do best). Get tech experts in fields you have used to check the facts.
6) NOW - after all that, you polish the text, not just running spell check, but going through the whole MS looking for word-substitution typos, bad sentence structure, wordy constructions "Well, the fact of the matter is that he lied" becomes "Well... he lied." Don't use grammar-check, learn grammar.
7) Yet another test reader, one who knows grammar, punctuation, spelling and reads books from your target publisher in your target genre. (each publishing house has a style sheet dictating grammar, spelling, punctuation). That's your final step - no sense polishing words you're going to delete. In hand-written times, that was known as "making a fair copy." On foolscap.
After doing this 7 step self-test on various projects, you will eventually come to where your test readers aren't finding so many things to fix. With repetition, you start producing things that actually are publishable if not of the highest quality on second or even first draft. First draft is the goal in low-paying markets, and that means you must PERFORM your writing at concert pitch. In higher paying markets, you might run the story through these 7 tests several times and keep perfecting on each draft, raising the "quality."
THE ESSENCE OF STORY IS CONFLICT
Even if you meet the self-test criteria above, you can still attain the level of "badly written" IF THERE IS NO APPARENT CONFLICT.
Likewise, you can attain the label "boring" -- or "I couldn't get through it" -- if there is NO COHERENT THEME that is illustrated by the conflict.
A "story" is a sequence sliced out of a character's life wherein they LEARN A LESSON (your theme) by OVERCOMING OBSTACLES or ATTAINING A GOAL (obstacles and goal generate the plot-line).
If you pick the wrong primary character (lead, star or hero), no matter how well you do the objective mechanics in the 7 point checklist, the art fails and your novel is "badly written" or "low quality."
If you pick the right primary character, BUT start at the wrong place in that character's story, the art fails and your novel is "badly written."
"Quality" is actually NOT TASTE -- it is not mysterious.
That's why slush pile readers, screenplay coverage readers, editors, agents, and reviewers can sort a stack of manuscripts, screenplays, ARCs, or published books very quickly and toss out more than half that don't meet the quality standard necessary.
Here's how it's done. (all beginners think this is unfair and won't work, but it is fair and it does work when done professionally)
1) check first page -- any error of craft, toss the MS
2) check p5 -- if the story-development point (beat) is not there, toss.
3) check the MIDDLE. If the high or low EVENT isn't there, toss.
4) check the END. Compare to beginning and middle. If the final image doesn't RESOLVE the conflict set out on pgs 1-5 - toss without reading the whole thing.
5) check the 1/4 and 3/4 points -- if the plot development is correct on those points, then read the whole thing. (a novel is generally 4 "acts" or "movements" like a 1-hour TV episode, so it's quarter-points you look at; but with a screenplay for a feature film, it's usually 3 acts, so the pages for the beats are different, but the principle is the same.
These 5 checks quickly reveal if the writer has violated the TROPE the professional reader is looking for. If the trope the reader wants isn't there, even if the item is high quality of its type, it isn't worth the professional reader's time ($$/Hour remember? Business model rules supreme.)
So what chance does a writer have of getting through this screening process and having a manuscript read by someone who might pay for it?
Getting through those tests is also a learn-able bit of craft.
Focus on the simple fact that these tests are entirely objective.
Matters of taste and art are judged after the objective craft is judged. And according to that article in Wired Magazine, matters of taste and art are currently much less important than they once were.
Note how the article points out that using this computer algorithm to sift search results for what people want, and then providing exactly what they are searching for is more effective than a room full of professional experts creating topics they think people ought to want.
Soon feature films will be marketed that way, I'm sure, maybe novels first. Remember what Rowena Cherry found in that survey of Romance readers -- half want more sex. Survey replaces art.
The MAJORITY AUDIENCE will soon be conditioned to expect this kind of responsiveness from the media. "Quality" means "what I like." And now people are being mass-conditioned to expect their expectations to be met.
When you take their money for a book but betray expectations -- they have no clue what's wrong, so they say "badly written" and don't waste money on that byline again (and warn off all their blog readers).
A lot of editors either fall in that bewildered category, or simply have no time to waste with "writers" who can't write the required trope in the required time. It's not the editor's job to teach you to write. ($$/hour - remember that. Read that Wired Magazine article carefully.)
I have been tackling ways of explaining these parameters of "well written" stories for a couple of years now (not systematically) on this blog.
One thing Marion Zimmer Bradley taught, I have found to be true -- anyone who can write a literate English sentence can sell fiction. A LOT of my students have done so.
And though the article in Wired Magazine points to Demand Media as something "new" -- it actually isn't new from a writer's point of view. Since the commercialization of the printing press, quick-n-dirty production has been a component of the writer's business model. And as I said above, the Dime Novel, the Mass Market paperback, and now today YouTube videos, are all about $$/hour and professionalism.
Professional writing is not a mystery, it's not arbitrary, it's not a secret. It's not even hard except for the part where you take what your artistic subconscious produces and externalize it.
Failing to externalize your art produces what Marion Zimmer Bradley called "self-indulgent" novels. A particular editor might buy it - but readers will call it "badly written" because they don't know where the failure happened.
Externalizing your art is an entirely different process for each writer, it's idiosyncratic, but something you can teach yourself with the 7 point checklist for "Quality" of craft.
E-pub and self-pub is the ONLY route open to those who can do all these other things on the checklist, but fail to externalize their art, de-personlize it, universalize it.
The best way is to train your subconscious in your genre's trope until it produces fiction pre-configured to fit your market.
That's why professional writers warn neo-writers off "workshops" and posting "fanfic" online. You end up rewarding your subconscious for practicing your mistakes, and you train your subconscious to AVOID EXTERNALIZING. That will doom you to a lot of rewriting once you understand which step you have skipped.
"Quality" is often, alas, proportionate to time spent re-doing and perfecting the craft underlying the art. The ingredients of a quality product are often rare (fine olive oil is "virgin" -- the rest of the press is used for something else). Flawed diamonds are not used in the crown jewels, though they work fine for industrial purposes.
Are you in the business of fine art? Or commercial art? Knowing the difference and the difference in business model, could be the real key to success in your life.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/dushau
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Google Earth (or the stars, or Mars, or the moon)
It's easy to be seduced by Research!
When I wrote my first draft of my first alien romance, Forced Mate, I got carried away by the fact that there is (or was, in 1993) still a type of plane just big enough to carry a stretch limousine across the Atlantic, but small enough to take off from an abandoned World War II airbase near Cambridge (UK), and fly below radar all the way to Las Vegas, Nevada.
An amateur pilot mapped out the route for me.
Eventually, I came to see that there was no logical reason why a romantically minded space alien would abduct his heroine from Cambridge in the UK and take her (kicking and screaming) to Nevada, no matter how curious he might be to see how Siegfried and Roy made tigers disappear. Duh! He'd take her to his mothership.
Another researcher told me that the most plausible place for a spaceship (a smallish shuttle) to land in the UK would be on Salisbury Ridge, close to Salisbury Plain (and Stonehenge). I've lost touch with that researcher, unfortunately.
So, now I'm on my own, trying to find Salisbury Ridge. I'm using Google Earth. There's a place called Ridge at Chilmark. Another possible place to hide and lose a spacecraft appears to be in the Nile Clumps... I hate to make things up, if I don't have to do so!
I took a spin on Google Earth. My first destination was Ridge, Chilmark, which does look possible, but is a bit far from Stonehenge. I can zoom and bank to view the terrain with a hawk's eye view or with the perspective of a galloping sauropod... one with poor eyesight.
Seriously, I can see hills, trees, fields, crop circles, overgrown gun emplacements, drone launch pads (circular). If I wish to, I can see churches, pharmacies, ATMs, Holiday Inns, roads, fire hydrants... and more. I can also view photographs taken by tourists.
Sadly, some of the really cool things, such as "pimples" (of the anti-tank kind) that were posted on the Google Earth 3 version, are not on Google Earth 5, but GE5 has more whizz bang stuff and links to Wikipedia.
While virtually scouring the surroundings, looking for places to hide a star-fighter, and enjoying images of stormclouds over Stonehenge --and very useful photos of forks in minor British roads--, I found a fitting backstory for my latest hero. Now to check it out.
There's a Google Earth Community with forums and chats and groups, not to mention a Search function that is everything you'd expect from Google. It's possible to meet a potential source in whatever part of the world interests you. This is too cool!
I daresay, the only reason the CIA hasn't tried to purchase Google (if it hasn't) is that it would be too expensive. And, of course, the CIA like anyone else can use it for free.
Google Earth doesn't stop there. You can look at Mars. It's a separate download. I haven't done that. I doubt I'd find men there, anyway. You can look at the stars, which is a great way to finally get a handle on astronomy and the placement and shapes of the constellations. Finally, there's the Moon and it has flags and icons denoting info dumps, and all sorts of good and useful stuff on its surface.
If you haven't tried it, I heartily recommend it.
Rowena Cherry
Space Snark TM
When I wrote my first draft of my first alien romance, Forced Mate, I got carried away by the fact that there is (or was, in 1993) still a type of plane just big enough to carry a stretch limousine across the Atlantic, but small enough to take off from an abandoned World War II airbase near Cambridge (UK), and fly below radar all the way to Las Vegas, Nevada.
An amateur pilot mapped out the route for me.
Eventually, I came to see that there was no logical reason why a romantically minded space alien would abduct his heroine from Cambridge in the UK and take her (kicking and screaming) to Nevada, no matter how curious he might be to see how Siegfried and Roy made tigers disappear. Duh! He'd take her to his mothership.
Another researcher told me that the most plausible place for a spaceship (a smallish shuttle) to land in the UK would be on Salisbury Ridge, close to Salisbury Plain (and Stonehenge). I've lost touch with that researcher, unfortunately.
So, now I'm on my own, trying to find Salisbury Ridge. I'm using Google Earth. There's a place called Ridge at Chilmark. Another possible place to hide and lose a spacecraft appears to be in the Nile Clumps... I hate to make things up, if I don't have to do so!
I took a spin on Google Earth. My first destination was Ridge, Chilmark, which does look possible, but is a bit far from Stonehenge. I can zoom and bank to view the terrain with a hawk's eye view or with the perspective of a galloping sauropod... one with poor eyesight.
Seriously, I can see hills, trees, fields, crop circles, overgrown gun emplacements, drone launch pads (circular). If I wish to, I can see churches, pharmacies, ATMs, Holiday Inns, roads, fire hydrants... and more. I can also view photographs taken by tourists.
Sadly, some of the really cool things, such as "pimples" (of the anti-tank kind) that were posted on the Google Earth 3 version, are not on Google Earth 5, but GE5 has more whizz bang stuff and links to Wikipedia.
While virtually scouring the surroundings, looking for places to hide a star-fighter, and enjoying images of stormclouds over Stonehenge --and very useful photos of forks in minor British roads--, I found a fitting backstory for my latest hero. Now to check it out.
There's a Google Earth Community with forums and chats and groups, not to mention a Search function that is everything you'd expect from Google. It's possible to meet a potential source in whatever part of the world interests you. This is too cool!
I daresay, the only reason the CIA hasn't tried to purchase Google (if it hasn't) is that it would be too expensive. And, of course, the CIA like anyone else can use it for free.
Google Earth doesn't stop there. You can look at Mars. It's a separate download. I haven't done that. I doubt I'd find men there, anyway. You can look at the stars, which is a great way to finally get a handle on astronomy and the placement and shapes of the constellations. Finally, there's the Moon and it has flags and icons denoting info dumps, and all sorts of good and useful stuff on its surface.
If you haven't tried it, I heartily recommend it.
Rowena Cherry
Space Snark TM
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Shapeshifter Heroes
Another productive session at RomantiCon was a reader focus group on what people want to see more of or less of in paranormal romance. The question was raised whether a shapeshifter's animal form has to be a predator species. Wolves and big felines (tigers, lions, leopards, jaguars, etc.) are, of course, the most popular kinds of were-beasts. People didn't seem to have any trouble with birds as shapeshifting heroes if they are raptors. The consensus seemed to be that a romantic hero must have an animal form that carries an aura of power and perhaps danger. Dogs and cats were okay with most people, too, depending on the story. Bears weren't mentioned, but certainly the bear bridegroom is found in fairy tales.
There seemed to be a generally dubious attitude toward herbivores as shapeshifter heroes, though. I think, however, that some kinds of non-predator animals make perfectly good were-heroes. Horses, for example. Stallions represent wild, free masculine power, and of course the traditional girl-horse bond contributes to the allure. Nancy Springer's YA fantasy HEX WITCH OF SELDOM, although not strictly a romance (no "happily ever after" union), has a teenage girl involved with a man-horse shapeshifter. Mary Jo Putney has a historical romance with a hero who has been involuntarily changed into a unicorn. What about bulls? Zeus ravished one of his human mistresses in the form of a bull, among many other shapes he assumed in myth, including the swan that impregnated the mother of Helen of Troy. Non-mammals other than birds? A large serpent, maybe? And don't forget the frog prince, not exactly a powerful or ravishing creature but certainly a familiar fairy tale motif. Branching out from the land, consider the Silkie, the seal who takes the form of a man and seduces women. I think a dolphin shapeshifter would make an appealing hero, though I don't remember ever reading about one. What other kinds of animals are charismatic enough to make suitable alternate shapes for the romantic male lead? Setting aside romantic comedy, in which a frog or any other less dignified form might work (again, as one of my editors always says, “it depends on the execution”).
In my fiction I've had werewolves, weredragons, a wizard changed into a St. Bernard, and a vampire who takes the form of an owl.
Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt
There seemed to be a generally dubious attitude toward herbivores as shapeshifter heroes, though. I think, however, that some kinds of non-predator animals make perfectly good were-heroes. Horses, for example. Stallions represent wild, free masculine power, and of course the traditional girl-horse bond contributes to the allure. Nancy Springer's YA fantasy HEX WITCH OF SELDOM, although not strictly a romance (no "happily ever after" union), has a teenage girl involved with a man-horse shapeshifter. Mary Jo Putney has a historical romance with a hero who has been involuntarily changed into a unicorn. What about bulls? Zeus ravished one of his human mistresses in the form of a bull, among many other shapes he assumed in myth, including the swan that impregnated the mother of Helen of Troy. Non-mammals other than birds? A large serpent, maybe? And don't forget the frog prince, not exactly a powerful or ravishing creature but certainly a familiar fairy tale motif. Branching out from the land, consider the Silkie, the seal who takes the form of a man and seduces women. I think a dolphin shapeshifter would make an appealing hero, though I don't remember ever reading about one. What other kinds of animals are charismatic enough to make suitable alternate shapes for the romantic male lead? Setting aside romantic comedy, in which a frog or any other less dignified form might work (again, as one of my editors always says, “it depends on the execution”).
In my fiction I've had werewolves, weredragons, a wizard changed into a St. Bernard, and a vampire who takes the form of an owl.
Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Astrology Just For Writers Pt 6 - Targeting A Readership Pt 2
The topic here overlaps and synthesizes two threads I've been developing in the search for means to change the image of SF/Paranormal/Futuristic Romance
Heather did a fabulous summary post of where we are now and how to get where we're going with Romance at
http://www.thegalaxyexpress.net/2009/10/does-science-fiction-romance-need-gene.html?showComment=1255723748380#c6797085517666242508
And I do agree that the prevailing market wisdom indicates we need a new label or BRAND logo for SFR. I think it will be derived from the seminal work that changes the landscape, what she calls the ground zero. (Rock-n-Roll; Punk Rock; Steam Punk, Urban Fantasy, New Wave, etc) That seminal work must have a visual element with an evocative label.
But in whom must it evoke what? Let's step back and take a longer perspective look at our market.
This look is founded in two of my previous posts here (plus all the others -- this is the phase of INSIDE THE WRITER'S MIND where bits and pieces get synthesized.)
Look again at:
1) Astrology Just For Writers Part 5
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/12/astrology-just-for-writers-part-5-high.html
2) Targeting a Readership Part One
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/targeting-readership-part-one.html
Now let's explore the use of Astrology over long, sweeping generations to look at what becomes popular among a given age group and why. Remember this post:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/choosing-age-of-your-protagonist-to-win.html
To synthesize all this into something a writer can use, we have to consider the Essence of Amusement, which is actually a separate topic -- what clicks your pleasure button and why. This is very mystical stuff with a practical application.
Rowena Cherry tickled the edges of "Essence of Amusement" in her musings about what a heroic-devil could and could not do in a novel and retain reader sympathy.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/for-gods-sake-im-kitchen-witch-i-cant.html
There are several discussions going on in the Amazon Communities boards for Romance about which hugely popular authors you just mysteriously don't like, and another about which authors you've stopped reading lately -- very illuminating.
Those Amazon Community Boards readers (you have to have an amazon account I think to get there, but here's the link)
http://www.amazon.com/communities/directory/ref=sv__1
are not reviewing so much as recommending books to each other. For example, there's a thread about "If I loved TWILIGHT, what should I read next?"
Lots of action in the Romance communities there, but I think there's more in the Romance community at Goodreads.com where there are a lot of authors involved.
The Amazon discussions are mostly by readers for readers, which being a reader, I find fascinating and useful.
But they're discussing their personal reaction to this or that novel series (and series are actually as hot right now as publishers seem to think. Readers don't want "the end" -- they want "ongoing adventures of," which makes the HEA ending concept worth re-thinking.)
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/beauty-and-beast-constructing-hea.html
If they like some characters or a fictional world, readers want more and more of the same, but they drop the series once it becomes more and more of the same. Just like TV viewers!
Being readers they don't know or care WHY they like or dislike, or gobble or drop, a story or even a writer's entire output. They just want their money's worth of amusement. That seems fair to me. And wise.
Harking back to Rowena's post on dialog snippets:
"Give me a good read!"
"What do you want?"
"How should I know? You're the writer. That's your job."
OK, roll up your sleeves and let's get to the dirty work.
The Essence of Amusement
Why are we amused?
What is amusement?
Why does a writer have to know?
Caution here -- some writers shouldn't know consciously what amuses their readers.
Other writers can't produce good amusement without knowing consciously.
Yet others need a little of this and a little of that to get it right.
Neurolinguistic programming is a scientific discipline trying to find the interface between brain cells and responses. Scientists long ago found a "pleasure center" which can be directly stimulated, even with addictive consequences.
Reading (fiction or non-fiction) either stimulates that pleasure center in some peripheral, possibly intellectual way -- or it turns off some pain center responses. It may do both on occasion to produce the books we "love."
That effect on engaging the imagination to stimulate or overcome some brain circuit signal would likely have remained the same since caveman days. Or maybe before that. 4.4 million years ago, at least, twice as long ago as previously assumed. I need to find out how long ago Pluto was "captured" by our sun, if that's in fact what Pluto is - a Capture.
THIS FROM THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ON HUMAN FOSSIL DISCOVERY - Oct 1, 2009
-------------
The fossil puts to rest the notion, popular since Darwin's time, that a chimpanzee-like missing link—resembling something between humans and today's apes—would eventually be found at the root of the human family tree. Indeed, the new evidence suggests that the study of chimpanzee anatomy and behavior—long used to infer the nature of the earliest human ancestors—is largely irrelevant to understanding our beginnings.
....
The Ardipithecus ramidus fossils were discovered in Ethiopia's harsh Afar desert at a site called Aramis in the Middle Awash region, just 46 miles (74 kilometers) from where Lucy's species, Australopithecus afarensis, was found in 1974. Radiometric dating of two layers of volcanic ash that tightly sandwiched the fossil deposits revealed that Ardi lived 4.4 million years ago.
------------
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091001-oldest-human-skeleton-ardi-missing-link-chimps-ardipithecus-ramidus.html
We are now learning how species shift and evolve abruptly and why -- two reasons: supervolcanos and magnetic polar reversals.
There's a lot of research on evolution of humans that traces a huge genetic shift to the eruption of a supervolcano 70,000 years ago from now. It's a genetic process called a genetic bottleneck, and I did a really short blog post on that at
http://editingcircle.blogspot.com/2009/10/toba-supervolcano-caused-genetic.html
This stuff about evolution and our ability to be amused is seriously primal, as Blake Snyder says (Save The Cat!)all screenplays that "open everywhere" just have to be PRIMAL.
PRIMAL is the key, and nothing is more PRIMAL than sex or violence (or both). Rowena Cherry just dropped a note on her own post
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/for-gods-sake-im-kitchen-witch-i-cant.html
Saying:
----------
Recently (as I mentioned on Heather's blog) a study was published that suggested more than 50% of romance readers want more sex in the novels they read.
Also, from my own observations and email exchanges with my Dorchester editor, marketability standards are changing. Some of the traditional "No-nos" are now acceptable.
-----------
If it's PRIMAL it sells -- provided it doesn't totally shatter a taboo. If you don't know about taboos and human culture, study some anthropology.
"Politically Incorrect" is another term for taboo.
In the film world, the term "edgy" means getting up close to the edge of a taboo but just not quite crossing that edge, so the almost-pain of anticipation is titillating, exciting, subconsciously disturbing, but not "run for the exits" pain. Laughter is the response to almost-pain. And laughter is a pleasure in itself. It's the ultimate goal of "amusement." Who doesn't LAUGH at unexpectedly terrific sex?
Done right, an "edgy" film about some social issue or political commentary can titilate the same nerve that gets a tweak from sexuality. "Playing" an audience with symbolism is just like "playing" a sexual partner to a maximized experience.
Well written fiction is configured just like good sex, which is why the ending of a story is called a CLIMAX.
Since films have to have the largest audiences because they are the most expensive to produce and distribute, "primal" has to be the watchword -- so essential an amusement even a caveman could understand.
And with the increasing emphasis on for-profit fiction, writers face a situation where the "edges" of "edgy" are shifting.
What is publicly acceptable has changed for whatever reason: possibly the audience is jaded; possibly a generation drilled in political correctness and sexual openness of the 1960's; possibly other factors such as Astrology may be involved; possibly all of the above.
So as Rowena correctly points out, editors are very aware (via twitter, facebook, myspace, goodreads.com amazon communities boards etc) that half the readers find the amount of raw sexuality in novels does not satisfy their need for amusement. They want more. But half the readers want the same or less!
If you look at the current political polls on approval for some government initiatives, we're right back where we were before 2008; the USA is about equally divided pro and con any issue, with about 15% in the middle apt to lean either way.
That political divide oddly mirrors the "acceptability" for sex in novels. I don't know if it correlates at all -- if the same people who want this political policy want more sex and the people who are against this political policy want less sex, while 15% in the middle are basically satisfied. I doubt anyone has done a study on that question. (who knows what may turn up on the web tomorrow!)
People with a taste for cerebral fiction (like SF or Mystery) don't necessarily also have a distaste for sexuality in fiction.
Cerebral thrills are only going to be sought out by the top 10 percentile rank of human beings, maybe 15 percentile ranks. Movies have to get 100 times cheaper to make in order to turn a profit off the top 15% of humans. The current tech innovations are bringing that target within range but it's not there yet.
Meanwhile, you'll always make more money off a bigger audience, so a writer should ponder how to frame their artistic output to reach the largest possible number of people with whatever the writer has to give.
Remember my post here on Winning a big film prize by choosing the age of your protagonist which I cited above?
Choosing protag's age to win an Oscar
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/choosing-age-of-your-protagonist-to-win.html
Audiences are grabbed by a protag they can understand and identify with.
Young people don't understand or identify with old people, and don't want to but old people were once young and understand, identify with, and yearn to BE young people. Old people have their own unique life-issues (remember the film COCOON? And it's precious sequel?) but the life issues of the young are not alien or irrelevant to the older consumer.
At the same time, YOUNG consumers can be swayed by advertising and peer pressure. Older people can not (waste of advertising dollars to target over 40 consumers.)
And that could be a problem we're having with SFR and author-advertising. SFR really targets OLDER people -- a ship's captain, for example, should be over 30 to be plausible, over 40 to be believable however sexy. The age of the protag determines the age of the core readership. You waste your money advertising to the over-40 crowd, but that's the target audience for most SFR. Now what do you do?
Alas, older people are not as easily swayed by peer pressure, either. The older reader doesn't read books because "everybody" is reading them - they read what they like. (odd factoid derived from reading Amazon Community).
In a post inside LINKEDIN I saw a publishing professional explaining to a beginning writer pondering self-publishing that publishing is not a "meritocracy" -- and books that deserve to be published don't necessarily get chosen to be published by the big houses.
That's a very good way to think about it because many working writers today were children reading voraciously when publishing WAS INDEED A MERITOCRACY!!! That's the model we've internalized - if my book OUGHT to be published, it will be. What a shock when it's not.
We've all read older books that became true lifetime favorites, cherished and re-read. Those books were published back when publishing was a meritocracy -- and publishing houses were the tax write-off wing of a larger enterprise. (really, that was the business model; publishing was supposed to lose money and if it didn't, the publishing house would get sold at a loss.)
Owning a publishing house was fashionable and an entre into the literati and higher social circles than mere CEO's could aspire to.
Yeah, snob appeal.
Editors were hired not for their commercial sense but for choosing books that "ought" to be published.
That was a different world. Today publishing has become a "for profit" business, cut-throat and thrashing in what seem to be death-throes (at least in paper publishing).
E-publishing and self-publishing have lowered the standards of the finished e-product so that you don't get that prestige factor just for "being an author."
"Authors" used to be in the top 1st percentile rank of the top 15 percentile ranks of all human beings.
Really, that's true. Way back in the early days of the Web, I took a "poll" thing about where I stand in the prestige ranks. As a writer, I hit the top. Professors weren't top. CEO's were top, writers just under.
Today it's different. With self-publishing, authors are maybe somewhere in the top 15 percentile ranks. Since that basically includes most all readers, readers don't flock to "authors" as they once did. Everyone knows a published author. It's not special or inaccessible. (working producers are still inaccessible but that's changing too)
Meeting an author is not the opportunity of a lifetime today.
The world has changed so we have a big opportunity to establish something new that could shape the world of the future.
But to achieve that, we have to get a grip on what is really going on as opposed to what all the financial decision makers assume is going on. That's the real work of a writer, a futurologist, an amusement vendor, knowing what nobody else suspects and using it to advantage.
There's a puzzle of the marketplace that has never been solved, and I can't say I have "the" solution. But by using a futurologist's thinking tools and worldbuilder's imagination, we might stumble upon a real clue specifically useful to Romance sub-genre writers, with this problem about spending personal advertising dollars to sway over-40 year old readerships.
The puzzle that bewilders editors and producers is simple.
"Why is this a hit, while that better thing isn't?"
Maybe it's not all entirely marketing?
The people who get rich are the ones who notice the first of the trend-setting leaders and flood in behind with imitations before the general public has heard of the trend.
Those trend-setting leaders are usually "accidents" -- mistakes editors made trying to pick a big winner, or little indie films that make it big at a festival.
Sometimes the trend setting author is a visionary, but sometimes the author is as bewildered by commercial success as the editor (Rowling comes to mind).
So successful editors and producers watch the fringes for something that has tweaked the pleasure-centers, clicked the Amusement Button and produced Amusement in a DEMOGRAPHIC SWATCH of the population -- a demographic with disposable income and the immaturity to be swayed by advertising.
In 2008, I did a series of columns (the first 6 columns of 2008) on Blake Snyder's approach to film structure using primal issues structured in a primal way.
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2008/
And I followed that with a series of columns on the astrological effect of PLUTO being dramatic and "larger than life."
Pluto: Melodrama Unleashed is the series title of those columns.
Under Pluto, I discussed Noel Tyl's Signature of Fame, an astrological meta-pattern you can find in natal charts of the absurdly rich and famous.
That Signature of Fame pattern pivots on Pluto in the natal chart and requires a fairly experienced astrologer to sift out of the background noise. But Tyl's Signature hypothesis explains graphically why it is so many who are rocketed to stardom crash and burn on drugs, sexual dissipation, bad judgment, trusting the wrong people, or dying of some dramatic disease.
Pluto is a magnifier of drama (among many other things). Pluto is just power, raw power, sexual power, financial power, political power, power over OTHERS (as in the power to sell snow to the Eskimos).
Pluto is not the drama itself. Pluto mixes in to an ordinary life event and magnifies it, blows it up, exaggerates, makes melodrama. You don't just drive your car into a ditch, you rocket off the Golden Gate Bridge leaving shattered traffic barriers behind.
Some handy current examples of Pluto in action.
When the economy crashed and burned at the end of 2008, it was after a long, slow shuddering buildup showing symptom after symptom that the "experts" ignored, which is typical of Pluto.
"I knew that would happen! Why didn't I pay attention?" And the answer is that Pluto represents what is underground, hidden, what is infrastructure. Plumbing, bridges, highways, electrical grid. You never notice it until it collapses.
So finally (it wasn't the beginning; it was FINALLY) Lehman Brothers melted down.
That coincided with the contact of Pluto to the 8th House cusp of (one of) the USA natal chart guesses. (astrologers argue about which chart is the real birthchart of the USA and all the candidates have different degrees for the 8th House cusp).
Pluto rules the Natural 8th House which is Scorpio, so when Pluto in current real-time comes to a degree that is a natal 8th House, Pluto's normally exaggerated effect is exaggerated more than 100%.
So we didn't just have a recession, we had a financial foundation infrastructure melt-down which magnified the recession we were due for.
8th House and Pluto and Scorpio symbolize the resources of others, (for a country, that's taxes and borrowing from foreign governments)
Obama was elected President with Pluto transiting opposition his Natal Venus, which is just about conjunct the USA Venus. (Venus rules Taurus-finances and Libra-Relationships).
Obama also had Neptune transiting his Ascendant casting a huge, magnified (Pluto) glamor (Neptune) over all his relationships (Venus).
His ability to speak was also at a lifetime best (Venus rules the voice box) etc. The whole country resonated to his way of handling relationships, and will for a while yet.
Pluto magnifies. It's about POWER.
Put a raw electric feed from the grid directly into your house circuitry and your house will just about EXPLODE with sparks and gouts of flame. No step-down transformers between you and the power plant, and E-GAD! The rest of your natal chart is the step-down transformer network through which POWER from Pluto (yes and your Sun) gets configured to be usable for daily living.
In "The Celebrity" that step-down-transformer network does not bring the voltage down to usability all the time -- and the result is extreme fame followed by a melodramatic personal meltdown (marriages-divorces; drugs; drinking; diving a plane into the ocean; spectacular rare diseases that make headlines)
8th House is Scorpio, one of the water signs, and thus participates in psychic attributes. People with a lot of water sign points in their natal chart are psychically open on some level, often without knowing it. That can help a Celebrity read an audience.
The first 6 columns I've done for 2010 which will be posted starting in January 2010 are all about The Group Mind (the psychic bond among us all at the Scorpio/Pluto/8th House level). In those columns I examine the interactive effects of the Group Mind and the Media -- analyzing popularity at its source.
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2010/ shows you the novels analyzed to reveal connections.
Hidden connections are Scorpio, Pluto, 8th House.
Pluto power can also manifest as a ruthlessness, obsessiveness devoid of conscience -- the perfect raw material for any arch-villain a writer might need. Secretive is a keynote of Pluto. 8th House, other's resources, plus secretiveness equals conspiracy. Wow, dynamite material for any writer.
Pluto is the upper octave of Mars that rules War (Aries, the First House, the supremacy of Ego). Mars is a cat fight, a squabble, a grab for some country's fertile fields. Mars is not violence but ego-energy, and if thwarted can use FORCE to impose the personal Will.
Pluto is war to total annihilation -- war exaggerated, with nothing personal in it. This is not war to possess the resources of another, but war to obliterate the other.
Pluto is capable of VIOLENCE with an iron clad will, an implacable purpose. But Pluto is not the violence itself, it's the magnifier that takes the violence erupting elsewhere in the chart and makes it implacable.
Pluto is the sexual "fun" derived from violence, especially the kind of violence perpetrated to control another (S&M) - games of sexual dominance played out on an international stage. (think THE GODFATHER). 8th House is also inheritance, the resources that are rightfully yours by inherent worth. Thwart that "rightful" possession and you get the explosive manifestation of Pluto. Pluto doesn't take what belongs to others. Pluto takes back what belongs to him. And everything belongs to him, by right of inheritance. Even if he has to kill to inherit. (fabulous villain material)
So why are we talking about Pluto while analyzing amusement?
We need a new theory of what amuses people for our New Electronic Age, and here's one I would like to explore.
Pluto is now making its last station on 0 degrees of Capricorn, just a bit past the USA 8th House cusp, and headed for a series of oppositions to the USA natal chart's most sensitive points.
We're in for a roller coaster ride, but if we can understand what makes Drama as Blake Snyder formulated it (2008 columns), and how the Group Mind interacts with Media (2010 columns), we can see what Pluto is magnifying.
If we then put all that together with the various other posts linked above, connect the dots and figure out what the NEXT most popular thing will be, we may trump Rowena's Dorchester editor (a great publishing imprint, BTW) and produce that Ground Zero work Heather's post on Galaxy Express talks about.
How can a writer come to understand their audience's "amusement" buttons?
The natural 5th House, Leo, ruled by the Sun, is usually considered the home of AMUSEMENT, the keynote of FUN. 5th House is where we play and recreate, procreate, speculate and gamble . 5th House is siblings and children and grandchildren, and all our love given to others. (it's opposite, 11th House is the love and appreciation we get back in return, the groups that accept us and appreciate our fun loving sense of humor.)
You'd think that to find out how to amuse people, to find out what amuses people in general, you should examine the 5th House.
But if you look at the explosive popularity of video games (based almost exclusively on violence, on KILLING opponents as a way of WINNING, of prevailing, of asserting dominance) and correlate with the demographic of the consumers of video games (teens at the threshold of sexual maturity) and then look at where Pluto was transiting during the years those teens were born, you might learn something startling about the nature of Amusement that can be sold in packages (8th House; other people's money).
In assessing any astrology problem, the hierarchy of planets is OUTER to INNER. First you look at the eclipse points, then PLUTO -- and everything else is commentary.
Most astrologers are taught to start with the Sun ruler of the Natural 5th. For our purposes, that won't work because it won't yield generational profiles.
What do generations have in common? The signs in which the outer planets Pluto, Neptune, and Uranus, are placed. The Sun goes around once a year. Those outer planets keynote generations by their slow movement. The Sun position binds generations together (each generation has an equal number of Leos, Aries, etc.). The Outer Planets separate generations.
Since advertising dollar effectiveness depends on generational age-groups, we need to look beyond the Sun for the key to the puzzle, "What Amusement Can Be Packaged And Sold For Money?"
Individual natal charts have the planets and signs in different houses, all aspected differently by faster moving points such as the Sun, Moon, Mercury and Venus. Really, when it comes down to it, astrology almost shows us why we seem to have nothing at all in common! No two of us are alike!
But as marketers have discovered, generations do have something in common with regard to taste.
What each generation wants (thank you Rowena for the "What do you want?" line) is a mystery until one of those obscure products (like hula hoops) suddenly explodes onto the scene.
There is a theme to each generation born, something that will amuse them all their lives long, in various different forms and formats.
How long Pluto stays in a given sign changes because Pluto's orbit is very elliptical, and it even cuts inside Neptune's orbit. That odd orbit, out of the plane of the ecliptic and slanting across another planet's orbit is what got Pluto demoted from planet status -- it's considered to be a captive from outer space rather than a planet formed from the plasma of our star. (BTW that is an old story, done to death in SF -- that Pluto is really a generation-ship, maybe with only dead or stasis passengers; the remains of a dead civilization out there somewhere).
So Pluto is an obsessively fascinating planet, but empirically you can see that as it changes signs, the world changes usually explosively or abruptly -- social mores change; civilizations rise and fall to the beat of Pluto (and maybe super-volcanoes and magnetic pole flips).
But on a very subconscious level, (and Pluto rules the subconscious values while the 2nd House ruler Venus rules conscious values) the Amusement Button for each generation may actually be best described by Pluto's sign in their natal charts.
What fascinates, obsesses, causes unbridled aggression -- what is it that marketers can use to get a handle on each generation?
It isn't what makes people laugh. It's what people of that generation simply can NOT take their attention away from. People will pay big bucks for what they obsess over subconsciously, bucks they won't pay for a quick laugh gone in an instant.
People would not pay $9/pack for cigarettes without nicotine (or a substitute that works as well.)
Consider these blocks of years and what topped the charts in music subjects, favorite actors, great political trends, shifting taboo lines, great-huge-magnified tsunamis of trends during these blocks of years.
Pluto takes 250 years to circle the sun, but it's in each sign (or 30 degree swatch of the zodiac) for different lengths of time.
Remember to add say 15-20 years to see when these folks would have an impact on amusement markets because they have disposable income.
PLUTO IN LEO 1939 - 1957 (Became The Flower Children of 1960's and '70's)
PLUTO IN VIRGO generation 1958 - 1972 (Gen X)
PLUTO IN LIBRA generation (assimilating out of justice?) Late 1971 - 1984 (Gen Y? sort of)
PLUTO IN SCORPIO generation 1985-1995 or so (video game generation?)
PLUTO IN SAGITTARIUS generation 1995-2008
PLUTO IN CAPRICORN (now - 2023)
Neptune Takes 165 years to circle the sun.
NEPTUNE IN LIBRA Oct 1942 - 1957
NEPTUNE IN SCORPIO 1957 - 1970
NEPTUNE IN SAGITTARIUS 1970 - 1984
NEPTUNE IN CAPRICORN 1984 - 1998
NEPTUNE IN AQUARIUS 1998 - 2011
NEPTUNE IN PISCES 2011 - 2026
Uranus 84.3 years, a lifetime.
The popular press uses the 20 year swatch for a "generation" usually, or a demographic bulge of kids all born within 10 years to define a "generation." But think about the list above and see if it doesn't make better sense than the popular press definitions.
LEO is the natural 5th House of Amusement, but also of sovereignty --
Pluto in Leo produced the Flower Children, fun on drugs, altered consciousness and "doing my own thing."
Pluto in Virgo produced Generation X, craving White Wine and monied elegance. The detail oriented upwardly mobile fashionistes. There weren't many of them because the Baby Boomers (1947-1960) and Flower Children didn't have their kids until later in life.
Pluto in Libra produced Gen Y.
Wikipedia says there's no set borders for Gen Y but they're the Boomer Echo generation, the Boomer's kids. You see The Boomers fit inside Pluto in Leo but don't take up all of it.
Gen Y was coming of age in a "liberated" world where political correctness is everything, intermarriage is the norm, and women have their children only in the last minute panic of the biological clock. Many Gen Y kids have older parents.
The last of Gen Y turned 20 in 2004, coming out of school into a crashed economy, desperately in search of social justice (Libra is Justice) in a world they believed they didn't owe anything to (unlike the Boomers who flocked to President Kennedy's Peace Corps). Gen Y is the first generation to have computers in HIGH SCHOOL classrooms, and pioneered video games.
The following is from Brookhaven History
http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/history/higinbotham.asp
----------QUOTE---------
In 1982, Creative Computing magazine picked up on the idea that Tennis for Two might be the first video game ever and it published a story on the game ...
----------END QUOTE------
Gen Y came of age just as the possibility of video games emerged, and the home computer became financially feasible.
PLUTO IN SCORPIO kids -- only 10 years worth of kids -- grew up with computers in GRAMMAR SCHOOL classrooms and at home and became the market for the most violent video games. Pluto rules Scorpio, the Natural 8th House - when Pluto was in Scorpio it was its most POWERFUL. For the 1/12th of those kids born with Pluto in Scorpio in their own 8th House, Pluto issues are likely to rule the whole life.
There was a huge baby boom in the 1990's. Though it's only a 10 year span, 1985-1995 saw an unusual increase in the demographic significance of that generation who are now entering college and the lesser educated workforce.
That Pluto in Scorpio generation turned out the most young voters ever in this previous Presidential election, and you've all seen their vehemence (power) in political rallies (both sides of the issues!)
The generation reared on the most violent video games is determined to assert their right to their inheritance, their rightful possession by dint of the fact that they exist.
Employers have already noted that the current 18-20 year olds they hire are mortally offended by any workplace rule that prohibits texting during work hours. Employers have no right to restrict behavior or communication during work hours. (I saw a study about that posted online, and saw several interviews about it on TV, but didn't save any references, sorry. I may have referred to it in a previous post here.)
The Pluto in Scorpio generation (only 10 years long) has passed on their taste for video games to the Pluto in Sagittarius generation.
PLUTO IN SAGITTARIUS, 1995 - 2008, are still just babies, and their buying power is still mostly controlled by Gen Y parents.
But for us, it's interesting to note the success of TWILIGHT with the Pluto in Sagittarius teens.
Gen X acquired a real taste for the teen-vampire novel. The sex appeal of Vampires with the edgy connotations of risking death is soooo PLUTO!
YA shelves filled with vampires in the 1980's, which naturally gave rise to BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER a little later, and all sorts of vampire spinoffs for older people.
TWILIGHT and the urban-fantasy vision of reality as a thin film over a seething cauldron of evil is intensely popular with Pluto in Scorpio AND Pluto in Sagittarius.
Noel Tyl, an astrologer's astrologer, has identified the axis in the natal chart that describes one's deepest anxieties, fears, nightmares, repressed fears -- the kind of deep, inarticulate fears that rule our behavior and which we rationalize.
That axis is the 3rd House/ 9th House axis.
The Natural 3rd House is Gemini, ruled by Mercury (thought, communication, short trips, fast moves, and also indecisiveness and restlessness).
The Natural 9th House is Sagittarius, ruled by Jupiter, and all about Philosophy, Courts, Social Justice, the generous and magnanimous King, the kindness of the world, success by expansion, growth. Sagittarius is all about open-honesty as the adjacent sign of Scorpio is all about hidden realities. Sag is long trips, foreign countries, PUBLISHING!!!
Kids with Pluto in Sagittarius are the teens who gobbled up Harry Potter (foreignly published) when they were 9 years old, TWILIGHT etc, in their teens. TWILIGHT treats the darker (Pluto is "dark") aspects of the vampire as "out there" and mostly ignorable, while the vampires that are "in here" are trustworthy and above all that dark stuff - probably. In TWILIGHT the nasty part is "hidden" (Pluto).
Marketers have noted a leveling off of the growth of computer games sales (not shrinking, just not growing as fast as there are no more Pluto in Scorpio kids coming to buying age)
The trend in films toward ever more exaggerated violence and destruction, spectacle for its own sake, (TRANSFORMERS?) pleasures and amuses Pluto in Scorpio folks in some way that mystifies the Pluto in Leo folks. And I don't think it's just because the Pluto in Leo folks are older. I think it's because the Pluto in Leo folks have an Amusement Button that's configured differently.
When the Pluto in Sagittarius kids are 18-25, what films will they be taking their girlfriends to? What games will they spend their money on? What will amuse them life-long? What songs will they popularize? (already, I see lyrics changing)
The dark, ugly subject matter of the first wave of popularized rap is giving way to something else, but it's gradual.
If the Pluto in Scorpio generation pushed the violence in video games beyond all previous taboos, what taboo will the Pluto in Sagittarius generation (the obese kid generation -- Jupiter, ruler of Sagittarius is famous for obesity, the JOLLY FAT WOMAN image is usually Jupiter on the Ascendant) what taboo will this new generation expand out of all sense and reason? What will obsess them as violence and destruction obsesses Pluto in Scorpio?
I also noted in the above list of transits how the position of Neptune correlates to the position of Pluto in the generational charts.
Neptune is all about illusion; Neptune, ruler of the Natural 12th House, Self Undoing, rules all things having to do with imagination, with glamor (Hollywood), charisma and also Religion and Idealism, and oddly today with technology and engineering (Pisces folks make marvelous Engineers. Engineers blend science and mechanics into technology using IMAGINATION.)
Neptune dissolves and blends.
Neptune is very hard to get ahold of conceptually.
Neptune, as I've discussed in various blog posts, is the key influence in any Romance situation. Your very personality dissolves during that key Neptune transit where you fall in love. Your bullshit filters dissolve. Your critical faculties shimmer away.
Neptune transits put you (whoever and whatever you are) into your own most receptive (Scorpio is a water sign) state such as you've never experienced before. Neptune transits allow that soul-mate bond to form.
What forms and solidifies under Neptune can never be destroyed -- that's the odd paradox of Neptune. It dissolves everything concrete but solidifies the vision. Neptune is all about hope.
It's about Magic and fantasy, hopes, dreams and imagination and everything you wish were real but isn't -- and everything you hope to God isn't real.
The generation born with Pluto in Sagittarius mostly have Neptune in Aquarius. Aquarius is the natural 11th House, as we noted above, Love Received, appreciation lavished upon you. The Pluto in Sagittarius (Justice; different from Libra's brand of Justice) generation must, as a Group Mind, be dreaming of being loved, adored, appreciated, elevated.
Tom Baker, the actor who played The Doctor in Doctor Who for about 20 years, was himself a multiple Aquarius (yeah, I found his chart).
The way he portrayed The Doctor exemplified the footloose, fancy free innovator who formed only temporary but intense ties with people who passed through his life. He cared about humanity -- not actually so much about individual humans except as they represented humanity. It's a tough distinction to make without making the character seem like a villain. But it's there if you look..
Aquarius males have a very easy time getting married, and a very very hard time staying married. They exemplify the utmost in loyalty but can't see why that should tie them down. Freedom. It's all about personal freedom.
So synthesize Pluto in Sagittarius with Neptune in Aquarius and see if you can determine the configuration of Amusement Button for the whole generation now just beginning to turn 14.
There are a lot of them and they will have buying power.
Marketers know that teens have more discretionary spending money than their parents.
When they're in college, what habit will they have become addicted to? (Pluto is that sort of energy; addiction, habit, subconscious).
Here are a couple of addendum notes to mull over while trying to nail the Amusement Button for the current teens.
-----------------------
Article on why it is that Science Fiction authors just can't win in this world (not sure I agree with definition of "win" but this is good advice in the making.
http://editingcircle.blogspot.com/2009/10/why-science-fiction-authors-just-cant.html
Is a very short post with the following link
http://sffmedia.com/books/science-fiction-books/417-why-science-fiction-authors-just-cant-win.html
So the core of the advice is that if you want a "genre" to gain respect, you have to drop the genre label and invent a new one.
Sylvia Louise Engdahl gives us a really explicit example of how this is being done today with her FLAME novels,
Stewards of the Flame and
Promise of the Flame,
stories of all-human societies but not on Earth, on Earth-derived colonies out there somewhere.
The setting demands the genre label SF, but the characters demand the label futuristic romance, and the plot (and huge, long, lazy expository lumps with the flavor of mainstream literary novels) demands the label philosophical fiction. Reading the FLAME novels is like reading early Heinlein but for modern readers.
So Engdahl has dropped both the YA label in which she became famous and the SF label.
------------------------------
Article on Women Horror Fans and film makers
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/movies/06oran.html?_r=2&hpw
“Jennifer’s Body” was designed with both feminists and 15-year-old boys in mind, a seemingly eccentric blueprint that, as Ms. Kusama points out, is in line with the best movies of the slasher tradition. “It may be one of the best ways for a young male audience to experience a female story without feeling like they have been limited by a female perspective,” she said.
"It was an effort that often bedeviled Ms. Cody and Ms. Kusama, who tried to balance brute violence and lesbian kisses with the film’s more substantial metaphors. “The tricky thing is if you’re going to subvert those tropes, they have to be there,” said Ms. Cody, whose script is a self-described “crazy, chaotic homage” to the horror films of her youth. “We were constantly bobbing and weaving. Karyn and I talk about the film as a kind of Trojan horse. We wanted to package our beliefs in a way that’s appealing to a mainstream audience.”"
"Horror films have adapted with Darwinian fortitude over the years, allegorizing everything from cold war paranoia and eco-anxiety to the breakdown of families. And yet the success of slasher movies, which exploded with films like “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” in 1974 and came to dominate what we now think of as scary movies, might have stalled cinema’s most resilient genre. "
The director Rob Zombie, whose recent release, “Halloween II,” revamps another 1970s proto-slasher (and one of the original “final girls,” the character Laurie Strode), says the genre’s indulgence has been its undoing.
“The ’80s are the decade that ruined everything for everybody,” he said. “The soul went away, and it became gore for the sake of gore, and kids were cheering at killings and yelling and screaming. It became a roller coaster ride. And of course once something becomes a roller coaster, all you can do is build a bigger, more extreme roller coaster. That’s where I think horror movies really got perverted.”
----------------------
There's a lot more to say on this topic of generational taste in amusement.
TAKE AWAY:
The important point is that people will pay more than they can afford for amusement that obsesses them, but not for amusement that merely entertains.
Those over 40 can't be enticed or attracted by advertising that costs money. Those currently over 40 were born with Pluto in Libra, Neptune in Sagitarrius. Go for it!
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Romantic Times Award Winning Dushau Trilogy
NOW ON KINDLE
Heather did a fabulous summary post of where we are now and how to get where we're going with Romance at
http://www.thegalaxyexpress.net/2009/10/does-science-fiction-romance-need-gene.html?showComment=1255723748380#c6797085517666242508
And I do agree that the prevailing market wisdom indicates we need a new label or BRAND logo for SFR. I think it will be derived from the seminal work that changes the landscape, what she calls the ground zero. (Rock-n-Roll; Punk Rock; Steam Punk, Urban Fantasy, New Wave, etc) That seminal work must have a visual element with an evocative label.
But in whom must it evoke what? Let's step back and take a longer perspective look at our market.
This look is founded in two of my previous posts here (plus all the others -- this is the phase of INSIDE THE WRITER'S MIND where bits and pieces get synthesized.)
Look again at:
1) Astrology Just For Writers Part 5
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/12/astrology-just-for-writers-part-5-high.html
2) Targeting a Readership Part One
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/targeting-readership-part-one.html
Now let's explore the use of Astrology over long, sweeping generations to look at what becomes popular among a given age group and why. Remember this post:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/choosing-age-of-your-protagonist-to-win.html
To synthesize all this into something a writer can use, we have to consider the Essence of Amusement, which is actually a separate topic -- what clicks your pleasure button and why. This is very mystical stuff with a practical application.
Rowena Cherry tickled the edges of "Essence of Amusement" in her musings about what a heroic-devil could and could not do in a novel and retain reader sympathy.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/for-gods-sake-im-kitchen-witch-i-cant.html
There are several discussions going on in the Amazon Communities boards for Romance about which hugely popular authors you just mysteriously don't like, and another about which authors you've stopped reading lately -- very illuminating.
Those Amazon Community Boards readers (you have to have an amazon account I think to get there, but here's the link)
http://www.amazon.com/communities/directory/ref=sv__1
are not reviewing so much as recommending books to each other. For example, there's a thread about "If I loved TWILIGHT, what should I read next?"
Lots of action in the Romance communities there, but I think there's more in the Romance community at Goodreads.com where there are a lot of authors involved.
The Amazon discussions are mostly by readers for readers, which being a reader, I find fascinating and useful.
But they're discussing their personal reaction to this or that novel series (and series are actually as hot right now as publishers seem to think. Readers don't want "the end" -- they want "ongoing adventures of," which makes the HEA ending concept worth re-thinking.)
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/beauty-and-beast-constructing-hea.html
If they like some characters or a fictional world, readers want more and more of the same, but they drop the series once it becomes more and more of the same. Just like TV viewers!
Being readers they don't know or care WHY they like or dislike, or gobble or drop, a story or even a writer's entire output. They just want their money's worth of amusement. That seems fair to me. And wise.
Harking back to Rowena's post on dialog snippets:
"Give me a good read!"
"What do you want?"
"How should I know? You're the writer. That's your job."
OK, roll up your sleeves and let's get to the dirty work.
The Essence of Amusement
Why are we amused?
What is amusement?
Why does a writer have to know?
Caution here -- some writers shouldn't know consciously what amuses their readers.
Other writers can't produce good amusement without knowing consciously.
Yet others need a little of this and a little of that to get it right.
Neurolinguistic programming is a scientific discipline trying to find the interface between brain cells and responses. Scientists long ago found a "pleasure center" which can be directly stimulated, even with addictive consequences.
Reading (fiction or non-fiction) either stimulates that pleasure center in some peripheral, possibly intellectual way -- or it turns off some pain center responses. It may do both on occasion to produce the books we "love."
That effect on engaging the imagination to stimulate or overcome some brain circuit signal would likely have remained the same since caveman days. Or maybe before that. 4.4 million years ago, at least, twice as long ago as previously assumed. I need to find out how long ago Pluto was "captured" by our sun, if that's in fact what Pluto is - a Capture.
THIS FROM THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ON HUMAN FOSSIL DISCOVERY - Oct 1, 2009
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The fossil puts to rest the notion, popular since Darwin's time, that a chimpanzee-like missing link—resembling something between humans and today's apes—would eventually be found at the root of the human family tree. Indeed, the new evidence suggests that the study of chimpanzee anatomy and behavior—long used to infer the nature of the earliest human ancestors—is largely irrelevant to understanding our beginnings.
....
The Ardipithecus ramidus fossils were discovered in Ethiopia's harsh Afar desert at a site called Aramis in the Middle Awash region, just 46 miles (74 kilometers) from where Lucy's species, Australopithecus afarensis, was found in 1974. Radiometric dating of two layers of volcanic ash that tightly sandwiched the fossil deposits revealed that Ardi lived 4.4 million years ago.
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http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091001-oldest-human-skeleton-ardi-missing-link-chimps-ardipithecus-ramidus.html
We are now learning how species shift and evolve abruptly and why -- two reasons: supervolcanos and magnetic polar reversals.
There's a lot of research on evolution of humans that traces a huge genetic shift to the eruption of a supervolcano 70,000 years ago from now. It's a genetic process called a genetic bottleneck, and I did a really short blog post on that at
http://editingcircle.blogspot.com/2009/10/toba-supervolcano-caused-genetic.html
This stuff about evolution and our ability to be amused is seriously primal, as Blake Snyder says (Save The Cat!)all screenplays that "open everywhere" just have to be PRIMAL.
PRIMAL is the key, and nothing is more PRIMAL than sex or violence (or both). Rowena Cherry just dropped a note on her own post
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/for-gods-sake-im-kitchen-witch-i-cant.html
Saying:
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Recently (as I mentioned on Heather's blog) a study was published that suggested more than 50% of romance readers want more sex in the novels they read.
Also, from my own observations and email exchanges with my Dorchester editor, marketability standards are changing. Some of the traditional "No-nos" are now acceptable.
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If it's PRIMAL it sells -- provided it doesn't totally shatter a taboo. If you don't know about taboos and human culture, study some anthropology.
"Politically Incorrect" is another term for taboo.
In the film world, the term "edgy" means getting up close to the edge of a taboo but just not quite crossing that edge, so the almost-pain of anticipation is titillating, exciting, subconsciously disturbing, but not "run for the exits" pain. Laughter is the response to almost-pain. And laughter is a pleasure in itself. It's the ultimate goal of "amusement." Who doesn't LAUGH at unexpectedly terrific sex?
Done right, an "edgy" film about some social issue or political commentary can titilate the same nerve that gets a tweak from sexuality. "Playing" an audience with symbolism is just like "playing" a sexual partner to a maximized experience.
Well written fiction is configured just like good sex, which is why the ending of a story is called a CLIMAX.
Since films have to have the largest audiences because they are the most expensive to produce and distribute, "primal" has to be the watchword -- so essential an amusement even a caveman could understand.
And with the increasing emphasis on for-profit fiction, writers face a situation where the "edges" of "edgy" are shifting.
What is publicly acceptable has changed for whatever reason: possibly the audience is jaded; possibly a generation drilled in political correctness and sexual openness of the 1960's; possibly other factors such as Astrology may be involved; possibly all of the above.
So as Rowena correctly points out, editors are very aware (via twitter, facebook, myspace, goodreads.com amazon communities boards etc) that half the readers find the amount of raw sexuality in novels does not satisfy their need for amusement. They want more. But half the readers want the same or less!
If you look at the current political polls on approval for some government initiatives, we're right back where we were before 2008; the USA is about equally divided pro and con any issue, with about 15% in the middle apt to lean either way.
That political divide oddly mirrors the "acceptability" for sex in novels. I don't know if it correlates at all -- if the same people who want this political policy want more sex and the people who are against this political policy want less sex, while 15% in the middle are basically satisfied. I doubt anyone has done a study on that question. (who knows what may turn up on the web tomorrow!)
People with a taste for cerebral fiction (like SF or Mystery) don't necessarily also have a distaste for sexuality in fiction.
Cerebral thrills are only going to be sought out by the top 10 percentile rank of human beings, maybe 15 percentile ranks. Movies have to get 100 times cheaper to make in order to turn a profit off the top 15% of humans. The current tech innovations are bringing that target within range but it's not there yet.
Meanwhile, you'll always make more money off a bigger audience, so a writer should ponder how to frame their artistic output to reach the largest possible number of people with whatever the writer has to give.
Remember my post here on Winning a big film prize by choosing the age of your protagonist which I cited above?
Choosing protag's age to win an Oscar
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/choosing-age-of-your-protagonist-to-win.html
Audiences are grabbed by a protag they can understand and identify with.
Young people don't understand or identify with old people, and don't want to but old people were once young and understand, identify with, and yearn to BE young people. Old people have their own unique life-issues (remember the film COCOON? And it's precious sequel?) but the life issues of the young are not alien or irrelevant to the older consumer.
At the same time, YOUNG consumers can be swayed by advertising and peer pressure. Older people can not (waste of advertising dollars to target over 40 consumers.)
And that could be a problem we're having with SFR and author-advertising. SFR really targets OLDER people -- a ship's captain, for example, should be over 30 to be plausible, over 40 to be believable however sexy. The age of the protag determines the age of the core readership. You waste your money advertising to the over-40 crowd, but that's the target audience for most SFR. Now what do you do?
Alas, older people are not as easily swayed by peer pressure, either. The older reader doesn't read books because "everybody" is reading them - they read what they like. (odd factoid derived from reading Amazon Community).
In a post inside LINKEDIN I saw a publishing professional explaining to a beginning writer pondering self-publishing that publishing is not a "meritocracy" -- and books that deserve to be published don't necessarily get chosen to be published by the big houses.
That's a very good way to think about it because many working writers today were children reading voraciously when publishing WAS INDEED A MERITOCRACY!!! That's the model we've internalized - if my book OUGHT to be published, it will be. What a shock when it's not.
We've all read older books that became true lifetime favorites, cherished and re-read. Those books were published back when publishing was a meritocracy -- and publishing houses were the tax write-off wing of a larger enterprise. (really, that was the business model; publishing was supposed to lose money and if it didn't, the publishing house would get sold at a loss.)
Owning a publishing house was fashionable and an entre into the literati and higher social circles than mere CEO's could aspire to.
Yeah, snob appeal.
Editors were hired not for their commercial sense but for choosing books that "ought" to be published.
That was a different world. Today publishing has become a "for profit" business, cut-throat and thrashing in what seem to be death-throes (at least in paper publishing).
E-publishing and self-publishing have lowered the standards of the finished e-product so that you don't get that prestige factor just for "being an author."
"Authors" used to be in the top 1st percentile rank of the top 15 percentile ranks of all human beings.
Really, that's true. Way back in the early days of the Web, I took a "poll" thing about where I stand in the prestige ranks. As a writer, I hit the top. Professors weren't top. CEO's were top, writers just under.
Today it's different. With self-publishing, authors are maybe somewhere in the top 15 percentile ranks. Since that basically includes most all readers, readers don't flock to "authors" as they once did. Everyone knows a published author. It's not special or inaccessible. (working producers are still inaccessible but that's changing too)
Meeting an author is not the opportunity of a lifetime today.
The world has changed so we have a big opportunity to establish something new that could shape the world of the future.
But to achieve that, we have to get a grip on what is really going on as opposed to what all the financial decision makers assume is going on. That's the real work of a writer, a futurologist, an amusement vendor, knowing what nobody else suspects and using it to advantage.
There's a puzzle of the marketplace that has never been solved, and I can't say I have "the" solution. But by using a futurologist's thinking tools and worldbuilder's imagination, we might stumble upon a real clue specifically useful to Romance sub-genre writers, with this problem about spending personal advertising dollars to sway over-40 year old readerships.
The puzzle that bewilders editors and producers is simple.
"Why is this a hit, while that better thing isn't?"
Maybe it's not all entirely marketing?
The people who get rich are the ones who notice the first of the trend-setting leaders and flood in behind with imitations before the general public has heard of the trend.
Those trend-setting leaders are usually "accidents" -- mistakes editors made trying to pick a big winner, or little indie films that make it big at a festival.
Sometimes the trend setting author is a visionary, but sometimes the author is as bewildered by commercial success as the editor (Rowling comes to mind).
So successful editors and producers watch the fringes for something that has tweaked the pleasure-centers, clicked the Amusement Button and produced Amusement in a DEMOGRAPHIC SWATCH of the population -- a demographic with disposable income and the immaturity to be swayed by advertising.
In 2008, I did a series of columns (the first 6 columns of 2008) on Blake Snyder's approach to film structure using primal issues structured in a primal way.
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2008/
And I followed that with a series of columns on the astrological effect of PLUTO being dramatic and "larger than life."
Pluto: Melodrama Unleashed is the series title of those columns.
Under Pluto, I discussed Noel Tyl's Signature of Fame, an astrological meta-pattern you can find in natal charts of the absurdly rich and famous.
That Signature of Fame pattern pivots on Pluto in the natal chart and requires a fairly experienced astrologer to sift out of the background noise. But Tyl's Signature hypothesis explains graphically why it is so many who are rocketed to stardom crash and burn on drugs, sexual dissipation, bad judgment, trusting the wrong people, or dying of some dramatic disease.
Pluto is a magnifier of drama (among many other things). Pluto is just power, raw power, sexual power, financial power, political power, power over OTHERS (as in the power to sell snow to the Eskimos).
Pluto is not the drama itself. Pluto mixes in to an ordinary life event and magnifies it, blows it up, exaggerates, makes melodrama. You don't just drive your car into a ditch, you rocket off the Golden Gate Bridge leaving shattered traffic barriers behind.
Some handy current examples of Pluto in action.
When the economy crashed and burned at the end of 2008, it was after a long, slow shuddering buildup showing symptom after symptom that the "experts" ignored, which is typical of Pluto.
"I knew that would happen! Why didn't I pay attention?" And the answer is that Pluto represents what is underground, hidden, what is infrastructure. Plumbing, bridges, highways, electrical grid. You never notice it until it collapses.
So finally (it wasn't the beginning; it was FINALLY) Lehman Brothers melted down.
That coincided with the contact of Pluto to the 8th House cusp of (one of) the USA natal chart guesses. (astrologers argue about which chart is the real birthchart of the USA and all the candidates have different degrees for the 8th House cusp).
Pluto rules the Natural 8th House which is Scorpio, so when Pluto in current real-time comes to a degree that is a natal 8th House, Pluto's normally exaggerated effect is exaggerated more than 100%.
So we didn't just have a recession, we had a financial foundation infrastructure melt-down which magnified the recession we were due for.
8th House and Pluto and Scorpio symbolize the resources of others, (for a country, that's taxes and borrowing from foreign governments)
Obama was elected President with Pluto transiting opposition his Natal Venus, which is just about conjunct the USA Venus. (Venus rules Taurus-finances and Libra-Relationships).
Obama also had Neptune transiting his Ascendant casting a huge, magnified (Pluto) glamor (Neptune) over all his relationships (Venus).
His ability to speak was also at a lifetime best (Venus rules the voice box) etc. The whole country resonated to his way of handling relationships, and will for a while yet.
Pluto magnifies. It's about POWER.
Put a raw electric feed from the grid directly into your house circuitry and your house will just about EXPLODE with sparks and gouts of flame. No step-down transformers between you and the power plant, and E-GAD! The rest of your natal chart is the step-down transformer network through which POWER from Pluto (yes and your Sun) gets configured to be usable for daily living.
In "The Celebrity" that step-down-transformer network does not bring the voltage down to usability all the time -- and the result is extreme fame followed by a melodramatic personal meltdown (marriages-divorces; drugs; drinking; diving a plane into the ocean; spectacular rare diseases that make headlines)
8th House is Scorpio, one of the water signs, and thus participates in psychic attributes. People with a lot of water sign points in their natal chart are psychically open on some level, often without knowing it. That can help a Celebrity read an audience.
The first 6 columns I've done for 2010 which will be posted starting in January 2010 are all about The Group Mind (the psychic bond among us all at the Scorpio/Pluto/8th House level). In those columns I examine the interactive effects of the Group Mind and the Media -- analyzing popularity at its source.
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2010/ shows you the novels analyzed to reveal connections.
Hidden connections are Scorpio, Pluto, 8th House.
Pluto power can also manifest as a ruthlessness, obsessiveness devoid of conscience -- the perfect raw material for any arch-villain a writer might need. Secretive is a keynote of Pluto. 8th House, other's resources, plus secretiveness equals conspiracy. Wow, dynamite material for any writer.
Pluto is the upper octave of Mars that rules War (Aries, the First House, the supremacy of Ego). Mars is a cat fight, a squabble, a grab for some country's fertile fields. Mars is not violence but ego-energy, and if thwarted can use FORCE to impose the personal Will.
Pluto is war to total annihilation -- war exaggerated, with nothing personal in it. This is not war to possess the resources of another, but war to obliterate the other.
Pluto is capable of VIOLENCE with an iron clad will, an implacable purpose. But Pluto is not the violence itself, it's the magnifier that takes the violence erupting elsewhere in the chart and makes it implacable.
Pluto is the sexual "fun" derived from violence, especially the kind of violence perpetrated to control another (S&M) - games of sexual dominance played out on an international stage. (think THE GODFATHER). 8th House is also inheritance, the resources that are rightfully yours by inherent worth. Thwart that "rightful" possession and you get the explosive manifestation of Pluto. Pluto doesn't take what belongs to others. Pluto takes back what belongs to him. And everything belongs to him, by right of inheritance. Even if he has to kill to inherit. (fabulous villain material)
So why are we talking about Pluto while analyzing amusement?
We need a new theory of what amuses people for our New Electronic Age, and here's one I would like to explore.
Pluto is now making its last station on 0 degrees of Capricorn, just a bit past the USA 8th House cusp, and headed for a series of oppositions to the USA natal chart's most sensitive points.
We're in for a roller coaster ride, but if we can understand what makes Drama as Blake Snyder formulated it (2008 columns), and how the Group Mind interacts with Media (2010 columns), we can see what Pluto is magnifying.
If we then put all that together with the various other posts linked above, connect the dots and figure out what the NEXT most popular thing will be, we may trump Rowena's Dorchester editor (a great publishing imprint, BTW) and produce that Ground Zero work Heather's post on Galaxy Express talks about.
How can a writer come to understand their audience's "amusement" buttons?
The natural 5th House, Leo, ruled by the Sun, is usually considered the home of AMUSEMENT, the keynote of FUN. 5th House is where we play and recreate, procreate, speculate and gamble . 5th House is siblings and children and grandchildren, and all our love given to others. (it's opposite, 11th House is the love and appreciation we get back in return, the groups that accept us and appreciate our fun loving sense of humor.)
You'd think that to find out how to amuse people, to find out what amuses people in general, you should examine the 5th House.
But if you look at the explosive popularity of video games (based almost exclusively on violence, on KILLING opponents as a way of WINNING, of prevailing, of asserting dominance) and correlate with the demographic of the consumers of video games (teens at the threshold of sexual maturity) and then look at where Pluto was transiting during the years those teens were born, you might learn something startling about the nature of Amusement that can be sold in packages (8th House; other people's money).
In assessing any astrology problem, the hierarchy of planets is OUTER to INNER. First you look at the eclipse points, then PLUTO -- and everything else is commentary.
Most astrologers are taught to start with the Sun ruler of the Natural 5th. For our purposes, that won't work because it won't yield generational profiles.
What do generations have in common? The signs in which the outer planets Pluto, Neptune, and Uranus, are placed. The Sun goes around once a year. Those outer planets keynote generations by their slow movement. The Sun position binds generations together (each generation has an equal number of Leos, Aries, etc.). The Outer Planets separate generations.
Since advertising dollar effectiveness depends on generational age-groups, we need to look beyond the Sun for the key to the puzzle, "What Amusement Can Be Packaged And Sold For Money?"
Individual natal charts have the planets and signs in different houses, all aspected differently by faster moving points such as the Sun, Moon, Mercury and Venus. Really, when it comes down to it, astrology almost shows us why we seem to have nothing at all in common! No two of us are alike!
But as marketers have discovered, generations do have something in common with regard to taste.
What each generation wants (thank you Rowena for the "What do you want?" line) is a mystery until one of those obscure products (like hula hoops) suddenly explodes onto the scene.
There is a theme to each generation born, something that will amuse them all their lives long, in various different forms and formats.
How long Pluto stays in a given sign changes because Pluto's orbit is very elliptical, and it even cuts inside Neptune's orbit. That odd orbit, out of the plane of the ecliptic and slanting across another planet's orbit is what got Pluto demoted from planet status -- it's considered to be a captive from outer space rather than a planet formed from the plasma of our star. (BTW that is an old story, done to death in SF -- that Pluto is really a generation-ship, maybe with only dead or stasis passengers; the remains of a dead civilization out there somewhere).
So Pluto is an obsessively fascinating planet, but empirically you can see that as it changes signs, the world changes usually explosively or abruptly -- social mores change; civilizations rise and fall to the beat of Pluto (and maybe super-volcanoes and magnetic pole flips).
But on a very subconscious level, (and Pluto rules the subconscious values while the 2nd House ruler Venus rules conscious values) the Amusement Button for each generation may actually be best described by Pluto's sign in their natal charts.
What fascinates, obsesses, causes unbridled aggression -- what is it that marketers can use to get a handle on each generation?
It isn't what makes people laugh. It's what people of that generation simply can NOT take their attention away from. People will pay big bucks for what they obsess over subconsciously, bucks they won't pay for a quick laugh gone in an instant.
People would not pay $9/pack for cigarettes without nicotine (or a substitute that works as well.)
Consider these blocks of years and what topped the charts in music subjects, favorite actors, great political trends, shifting taboo lines, great-huge-magnified tsunamis of trends during these blocks of years.
Pluto takes 250 years to circle the sun, but it's in each sign (or 30 degree swatch of the zodiac) for different lengths of time.
Remember to add say 15-20 years to see when these folks would have an impact on amusement markets because they have disposable income.
PLUTO IN LEO 1939 - 1957 (Became The Flower Children of 1960's and '70's)
PLUTO IN VIRGO generation 1958 - 1972 (Gen X)
PLUTO IN LIBRA generation (assimilating out of justice?) Late 1971 - 1984 (Gen Y? sort of)
PLUTO IN SCORPIO generation 1985-1995 or so (video game generation?)
PLUTO IN SAGITTARIUS generation 1995-2008
PLUTO IN CAPRICORN (now - 2023)
Neptune Takes 165 years to circle the sun.
NEPTUNE IN LIBRA Oct 1942 - 1957
NEPTUNE IN SCORPIO 1957 - 1970
NEPTUNE IN SAGITTARIUS 1970 - 1984
NEPTUNE IN CAPRICORN 1984 - 1998
NEPTUNE IN AQUARIUS 1998 - 2011
NEPTUNE IN PISCES 2011 - 2026
Uranus 84.3 years, a lifetime.
The popular press uses the 20 year swatch for a "generation" usually, or a demographic bulge of kids all born within 10 years to define a "generation." But think about the list above and see if it doesn't make better sense than the popular press definitions.
LEO is the natural 5th House of Amusement, but also of sovereignty --
Pluto in Leo produced the Flower Children, fun on drugs, altered consciousness and "doing my own thing."
Pluto in Virgo produced Generation X, craving White Wine and monied elegance. The detail oriented upwardly mobile fashionistes. There weren't many of them because the Baby Boomers (1947-1960) and Flower Children didn't have their kids until later in life.
Pluto in Libra produced Gen Y.
Wikipedia says there's no set borders for Gen Y but they're the Boomer Echo generation, the Boomer's kids. You see The Boomers fit inside Pluto in Leo but don't take up all of it.
Gen Y was coming of age in a "liberated" world where political correctness is everything, intermarriage is the norm, and women have their children only in the last minute panic of the biological clock. Many Gen Y kids have older parents.
The last of Gen Y turned 20 in 2004, coming out of school into a crashed economy, desperately in search of social justice (Libra is Justice) in a world they believed they didn't owe anything to (unlike the Boomers who flocked to President Kennedy's Peace Corps). Gen Y is the first generation to have computers in HIGH SCHOOL classrooms, and pioneered video games.
The following is from Brookhaven History
http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/history/higinbotham.asp
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In 1982, Creative Computing magazine picked up on the idea that Tennis for Two might be the first video game ever and it published a story on the game ...
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Gen Y came of age just as the possibility of video games emerged, and the home computer became financially feasible.
PLUTO IN SCORPIO kids -- only 10 years worth of kids -- grew up with computers in GRAMMAR SCHOOL classrooms and at home and became the market for the most violent video games. Pluto rules Scorpio, the Natural 8th House - when Pluto was in Scorpio it was its most POWERFUL. For the 1/12th of those kids born with Pluto in Scorpio in their own 8th House, Pluto issues are likely to rule the whole life.
There was a huge baby boom in the 1990's. Though it's only a 10 year span, 1985-1995 saw an unusual increase in the demographic significance of that generation who are now entering college and the lesser educated workforce.
That Pluto in Scorpio generation turned out the most young voters ever in this previous Presidential election, and you've all seen their vehemence (power) in political rallies (both sides of the issues!)
The generation reared on the most violent video games is determined to assert their right to their inheritance, their rightful possession by dint of the fact that they exist.
Employers have already noted that the current 18-20 year olds they hire are mortally offended by any workplace rule that prohibits texting during work hours. Employers have no right to restrict behavior or communication during work hours. (I saw a study about that posted online, and saw several interviews about it on TV, but didn't save any references, sorry. I may have referred to it in a previous post here.)
The Pluto in Scorpio generation (only 10 years long) has passed on their taste for video games to the Pluto in Sagittarius generation.
PLUTO IN SAGITTARIUS, 1995 - 2008, are still just babies, and their buying power is still mostly controlled by Gen Y parents.
But for us, it's interesting to note the success of TWILIGHT with the Pluto in Sagittarius teens.
Gen X acquired a real taste for the teen-vampire novel. The sex appeal of Vampires with the edgy connotations of risking death is soooo PLUTO!
YA shelves filled with vampires in the 1980's, which naturally gave rise to BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER a little later, and all sorts of vampire spinoffs for older people.
TWILIGHT and the urban-fantasy vision of reality as a thin film over a seething cauldron of evil is intensely popular with Pluto in Scorpio AND Pluto in Sagittarius.
Noel Tyl, an astrologer's astrologer, has identified the axis in the natal chart that describes one's deepest anxieties, fears, nightmares, repressed fears -- the kind of deep, inarticulate fears that rule our behavior and which we rationalize.
That axis is the 3rd House/ 9th House axis.
The Natural 3rd House is Gemini, ruled by Mercury (thought, communication, short trips, fast moves, and also indecisiveness and restlessness).
The Natural 9th House is Sagittarius, ruled by Jupiter, and all about Philosophy, Courts, Social Justice, the generous and magnanimous King, the kindness of the world, success by expansion, growth. Sagittarius is all about open-honesty as the adjacent sign of Scorpio is all about hidden realities. Sag is long trips, foreign countries, PUBLISHING!!!
Kids with Pluto in Sagittarius are the teens who gobbled up Harry Potter (foreignly published) when they were 9 years old, TWILIGHT etc, in their teens. TWILIGHT treats the darker (Pluto is "dark") aspects of the vampire as "out there" and mostly ignorable, while the vampires that are "in here" are trustworthy and above all that dark stuff - probably. In TWILIGHT the nasty part is "hidden" (Pluto).
Marketers have noted a leveling off of the growth of computer games sales (not shrinking, just not growing as fast as there are no more Pluto in Scorpio kids coming to buying age)
The trend in films toward ever more exaggerated violence and destruction, spectacle for its own sake, (TRANSFORMERS?) pleasures and amuses Pluto in Scorpio folks in some way that mystifies the Pluto in Leo folks. And I don't think it's just because the Pluto in Leo folks are older. I think it's because the Pluto in Leo folks have an Amusement Button that's configured differently.
When the Pluto in Sagittarius kids are 18-25, what films will they be taking their girlfriends to? What games will they spend their money on? What will amuse them life-long? What songs will they popularize? (already, I see lyrics changing)
The dark, ugly subject matter of the first wave of popularized rap is giving way to something else, but it's gradual.
If the Pluto in Scorpio generation pushed the violence in video games beyond all previous taboos, what taboo will the Pluto in Sagittarius generation (the obese kid generation -- Jupiter, ruler of Sagittarius is famous for obesity, the JOLLY FAT WOMAN image is usually Jupiter on the Ascendant) what taboo will this new generation expand out of all sense and reason? What will obsess them as violence and destruction obsesses Pluto in Scorpio?
I also noted in the above list of transits how the position of Neptune correlates to the position of Pluto in the generational charts.
Neptune is all about illusion; Neptune, ruler of the Natural 12th House, Self Undoing, rules all things having to do with imagination, with glamor (Hollywood), charisma and also Religion and Idealism, and oddly today with technology and engineering (Pisces folks make marvelous Engineers. Engineers blend science and mechanics into technology using IMAGINATION.)
Neptune dissolves and blends.
Neptune is very hard to get ahold of conceptually.
Neptune, as I've discussed in various blog posts, is the key influence in any Romance situation. Your very personality dissolves during that key Neptune transit where you fall in love. Your bullshit filters dissolve. Your critical faculties shimmer away.
Neptune transits put you (whoever and whatever you are) into your own most receptive (Scorpio is a water sign) state such as you've never experienced before. Neptune transits allow that soul-mate bond to form.
What forms and solidifies under Neptune can never be destroyed -- that's the odd paradox of Neptune. It dissolves everything concrete but solidifies the vision. Neptune is all about hope.
It's about Magic and fantasy, hopes, dreams and imagination and everything you wish were real but isn't -- and everything you hope to God isn't real.
The generation born with Pluto in Sagittarius mostly have Neptune in Aquarius. Aquarius is the natural 11th House, as we noted above, Love Received, appreciation lavished upon you. The Pluto in Sagittarius (Justice; different from Libra's brand of Justice) generation must, as a Group Mind, be dreaming of being loved, adored, appreciated, elevated.
Tom Baker, the actor who played The Doctor in Doctor Who for about 20 years, was himself a multiple Aquarius (yeah, I found his chart).
The way he portrayed The Doctor exemplified the footloose, fancy free innovator who formed only temporary but intense ties with people who passed through his life. He cared about humanity -- not actually so much about individual humans except as they represented humanity. It's a tough distinction to make without making the character seem like a villain. But it's there if you look..
Aquarius males have a very easy time getting married, and a very very hard time staying married. They exemplify the utmost in loyalty but can't see why that should tie them down. Freedom. It's all about personal freedom.
So synthesize Pluto in Sagittarius with Neptune in Aquarius and see if you can determine the configuration of Amusement Button for the whole generation now just beginning to turn 14.
There are a lot of them and they will have buying power.
Marketers know that teens have more discretionary spending money than their parents.
When they're in college, what habit will they have become addicted to? (Pluto is that sort of energy; addiction, habit, subconscious).
Here are a couple of addendum notes to mull over while trying to nail the Amusement Button for the current teens.
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Article on why it is that Science Fiction authors just can't win in this world (not sure I agree with definition of "win" but this is good advice in the making.
http://editingcircle.blogspot.com/2009/10/why-science-fiction-authors-just-cant.html
Is a very short post with the following link
http://sffmedia.com/books/science-fiction-books/417-why-science-fiction-authors-just-cant-win.html
So the core of the advice is that if you want a "genre" to gain respect, you have to drop the genre label and invent a new one.
Sylvia Louise Engdahl gives us a really explicit example of how this is being done today with her FLAME novels,
Stewards of the Flame and
Promise of the Flame,
stories of all-human societies but not on Earth, on Earth-derived colonies out there somewhere.
The setting demands the genre label SF, but the characters demand the label futuristic romance, and the plot (and huge, long, lazy expository lumps with the flavor of mainstream literary novels) demands the label philosophical fiction. Reading the FLAME novels is like reading early Heinlein but for modern readers.
So Engdahl has dropped both the YA label in which she became famous and the SF label.
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Article on Women Horror Fans and film makers
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/movies/06oran.html?_r=2&hpw
“Jennifer’s Body” was designed with both feminists and 15-year-old boys in mind, a seemingly eccentric blueprint that, as Ms. Kusama points out, is in line with the best movies of the slasher tradition. “It may be one of the best ways for a young male audience to experience a female story without feeling like they have been limited by a female perspective,” she said.
"It was an effort that often bedeviled Ms. Cody and Ms. Kusama, who tried to balance brute violence and lesbian kisses with the film’s more substantial metaphors. “The tricky thing is if you’re going to subvert those tropes, they have to be there,” said Ms. Cody, whose script is a self-described “crazy, chaotic homage” to the horror films of her youth. “We were constantly bobbing and weaving. Karyn and I talk about the film as a kind of Trojan horse. We wanted to package our beliefs in a way that’s appealing to a mainstream audience.”"
"Horror films have adapted with Darwinian fortitude over the years, allegorizing everything from cold war paranoia and eco-anxiety to the breakdown of families. And yet the success of slasher movies, which exploded with films like “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” in 1974 and came to dominate what we now think of as scary movies, might have stalled cinema’s most resilient genre. "
The director Rob Zombie, whose recent release, “Halloween II,” revamps another 1970s proto-slasher (and one of the original “final girls,” the character Laurie Strode), says the genre’s indulgence has been its undoing.
“The ’80s are the decade that ruined everything for everybody,” he said. “The soul went away, and it became gore for the sake of gore, and kids were cheering at killings and yelling and screaming. It became a roller coaster ride. And of course once something becomes a roller coaster, all you can do is build a bigger, more extreme roller coaster. That’s where I think horror movies really got perverted.”
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There's a lot more to say on this topic of generational taste in amusement.
TAKE AWAY:
The important point is that people will pay more than they can afford for amusement that obsesses them, but not for amusement that merely entertains.
Those over 40 can't be enticed or attracted by advertising that costs money. Those currently over 40 were born with Pluto in Libra, Neptune in Sagitarrius. Go for it!
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Romantic Times Award Winning Dushau Trilogy
NOW ON KINDLE
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