Cemetery Dance Publications will soon put out a limited edition of a new novella called “Blockade Billy” by Stephen King. Judging from the blurb, the story combines baseball and horror. This news even got a big article in the Baltimore SUN:
Baltimore Sun
This isn’t the first King title Cemetery Dance has published, but it’s the first time they’ve had an “exclusive” on a limited first edition by him. Although I subscribe to CEMETERY DANCE magazine, I’ve never bought one of their books. They produce deluxe, short-run products that are too expensive for me. I’m not a collector; I buy books strictly to read the words, and the idea of spending $25 for a novella makes me go “eek!” and run the other way. Even if it does include extras such as collectible baseball cards. (Thanks to online bookstore discounts, I never spend that much for NOVELS.) But I really, really wanted this novella now instead of many months later when it may get included in a King story collection at standard hardcover prices. To my delight, Amazon.com offered copies of the Cemetery Dance release at a deep discount of $13 and change. So I ordered it.
A few days later, it was announced that Cemetery Dance would not have enough copies (it’s a 10,000-copy run) to fill outside orders. Amazon canceled the availability of the book. Bummer. Then, happily, King’s regular publisher stepped up to the plate (to draw upon the baseball theme). They will release a non-limited edition in May at the reasonable price of about $14. Yay! I put that product in my Amazon shopping cart but did not pre-order. When I discovered today that the Kindle edition, still cheaper, has just been released, I bought it. Instant gratification, no waiting until nearly the end of May.
You may have figured out that I’m chintzy when it comes to shopping. I buy too many books not to seek bargains wherever available. (If my husband ever looked at the statements for the credit card I use at Amazon, he would doubtless say I buy too many books, period.) If I simply must read a new book right now, I buy the hardcover at the Amazon or Barnes and Noble online discount. If there’s a cheaper Kindle edition and it’s not one of the authors I feel I need to have in hard copy, I buy that. If I can wait, I either request the book from the library or buy the paperback later (or both). With older books, I often buy used copies from the online sites, especially if it’s something I’m not sure I’ll be enthusiastic about. As for highly overpriced items such as academic books, in most cases I couldn’t own them at all if not for cheap used copies.
The point of all this rambling—aside from “new Stephen King horror novella, yay!”—is to applaud what a wealth of format and price choices readers have nowadays and what innovative things some publishers and retailers are doing in the book distribution business. Well, some of them; some are trying to expect exorbitant prices for e-books and claiming that $9.99 Kindle editions are underpriced! If major publishers start charging near-hardcover prices for e-books and then act surprised when readers won’t buy them—well, they would be shooting themselves in the foot. The argument that e-books need just as much editing, formatting, etc. as print books, coming from mass market publishers, is disingenuous. When an e-book comes into existence as an additional format of a book that has already been released in print, all that work has already been done. Profits from the e-book should be mainly gravy. Our independent e-publishers (Hard Shell, Amber Quill, Ellora’s Cave, Mundania, etc.) seem to get along just fine pricing e-books at or below mass market paperback rates. Granted, they probably pay their editors a lot less than New York publishers pay theirs. But that difference couldn’t justify pricing e-books equal to (or even near) the print edition of the same book.
On the whole, though, there’s much going on to celebrate. In DIFFERENT SEASONS Stephen King labeled the novella the “banana republic” of fiction, the format nobody wanted. (As in, “Senor, your story is going to be here a long, long time.”) Now, thanks to the Internet, fiction of that length can be published and profitably sold to readers as a stand-alone unit. No longer do we have to hunt for a magazine or anthology willing to give the poor thing a home.
Speaking of anthologies, there’s a new one called WARRIORS that includes stories by three of my SF and fantasy favorite authors. The topic in general, though, doesn’t interest me a bit. I’d love to read those stories, but I’m not willing to pay the cost of a whole hardcover for them. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could buy electronic versions of individual stories out of an anthology, like individual songs off a music album? Actually, the Marion Zimmer Bradley estate is doing that very thing with items from the Darkover and SWORD AND SORCERESS volumes. They’re offering the individual tales separately on Fictionwise.com, with a generous cut to the authors. I wish more anthology editors would think of doing that.
So many potential opportunities for readers and writers. Truly, we live in frabjous times.
Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
7 Pursuits To Teach Yourself Writing Part I
My posts are always too long, so this time I'll try an experiment. I'm going to post this one in 2 parts, Part I and Part II, posted a week apart, even though it's a single long piece. How many of you who want to read Part II will forget to?
http://www.amazon.com/review/RSRPV96SU9D4W/ref=cm_cr_rev_detmd_pl?ie=UTF8&cdMsgNo=3&cdPage=1&store=books&cdSort=oldest&cdMsgID=Mx1S6NK71GGPZ5F#Mx1S6NK71GGPZ5F
Is a comment on a review I wrote of SAVE THE CAT!
The review I wrote has drawn 3 marvelous compliments from readers (and from Blake Snyder when he first published the book). This third comment though asks for a list of (currently available) books on screenwriting that would teach what you need to know before SAVE THE CAT!
Any list I could give you would probably be useless in a year or so because many of the titles would be out of print unless they were e-books. And even then, they would likely be out of date in some way because the entire field of "commercial entertainment" is always morphing. I will put a list though at the end of Part II.
And the truth is, though I've read countless books "on screenwriting" (started in grammar school and High School too, reading every book on playwriting the library would stock - inter-library loan books too) I've never read a screenwriting craft book that actually taught how to write a STORY.
Writing a script (stage play or screenplay) is a secondary skill.
You've seen any number of screenplays "based on a story by" -- screenplays have to be based on a story! Before you can write the screenplay, you must craft the story itself or find one already crafted.
Creating that story is actually a separate craft from screenwriting, and it is best learned by studying books on novel craft.
Yet a novel is structured differently than a play.
You have to learn that difference in order to write a story that would be useful to a screenwriter, yourself or someone else.
There is a way to teach yourself that difference and how to leverage that difference into a blockbuster screenplay based on a story by you.
So I'm going to give some examples of where to look, and how to identify a writing textbook that can help you -- but with a focus on what to do with those texts and how to do it.
The reason there are so many books on screenwriting is twofold.
a) there is no "one thing" to master and then you can do it. No two writers are alike, no two people master any performing art the same way, or in the same order. The ones who will sell scripts generally go this route, selecting a few courses, reading a lot of books because multitudes of approaches are needed.
b) there are multitudes of people who want to "become" screenwriters and will read books to dream about it, but will likely never finish any script. They keep buying books and paying for courses so the field grows. The ones who will sell scripts generally don't do it via this route, taking lots and lots of courses and buying lots and lots of books.
How do you teach yourself writing craft for storytelling in any medium?
Story craft is a huge subject. To master it, you must understand that the subject is bigger than you are.
Marion Zimmer Bradley had a 3X5 card tacked over her desk saying nobody ever told you not to be a plumber.
There are more efficient ways of making a living. Writing is the hardest work and the most underpaid except maybe ballet dancing.
Except for the top 1 to 5% of writers, the best paid working writers make less than minimum wage if you add up all the hours spent at it over a lifetime.
Writing is a vocation not an occupation.
It's a Calling.
You must dedicate your whole life to it and be willing to sacrifice everything else (sometimes your sacrifice isn't accepted and your family will miraculously stick by you no matter how you neglect them; but you must be willing, often savagely willing).
Read a lot of biographies. You'll see every really famous writer's biography includes a myriad occupations, all apparently disconnected. The career of writing is composed of odd jobs and a life of study.
So I'm going to list some of the pursuits that might lead through that myriad occupations to a career in writing. And from all this you may discover how to find the books on writing craft and screenwriting craft that will synthesize these pursuits into a sellable screenplay or novel (or both).
1) What is storytelling?
The first pursuit is to define what you are pursuing.
There is a craft called "storytelling" which is a theatrical discipline, and a folk-art.
Storytelling specifically refers to a person who stands up before a live audience and creates with words and dramatic delivery a story usually with a moral or lesson. It is perhaps the most ancient form, and most respected. The original objective may have been cultural continuity, bringing the young into the community.
It isn't exactly what I'm referring to as "storytelling," but all of its craft disciplines are very specifically relevant to learning to teach yourself the craft of commercial fiction writing for text or dramatization.
The most important lesson you can learn from storytellers is audience awareness.
A person who simply mouths off about their own internal fantasies is not story-telling. The "telling" part involves connecting emotionally to the audience and that means being aware of the audience's main fantasies. More about that later.
So the first "pursuit" on our list is to study storytelling from shamanistic origins through Broadway stageplay, even perhaps including folk music performances and today's popular rap forms until you understand exactly what you are aiming to master.
Storytelling is the core origin of "entertainment" - the kissing cousin of the Bardic Craft (traveling living newspaper and history book all wrapped in poetry and a rousing well lubricated singalong).
And all of these living person delivery systems are bundled up today in the "Classroom Teacher" from Kindergarten through 16th Grade. The school librarian or public children's librarian is another manifestation of this. Some even play guitar and sing to the tots!
These teachers are usually our first contact with live entertainment, the first ignition of the desire to share our fantasies, our inner lives, with others.
Teaching is entertainment at its best.
So to teach yourself, you must entertain yourself.
Learning is something else altogether.
I have held elsewhere that there is no such thing as "teaching" -- that one person can not convey either information or a world-view by force into an unwilling or disinterested mind. Even indoctrination doesn't work very well without an entertainment aspect.
But there is "learning" -- and "learning together" as a group activity.
As in "The King And I" -- "by your students you'll be taught" -- if you don't open yourself to absorbing lore from your students, they can not and will not absorb anything from you. So be careful who you set out to teach.
The English words "teaching" and "learning" imply one-sided activity, each disconnected from the other, each able to exist in isolation.
This is a property of the English language, a way of dividing the world into compartments that is distinct from the way languages from other Language Families divide the world.
The formal study of Linguistics, especially neurolinguistic programming, is highly recommended as a pursuit under this first category of pursuits. If you are to use language to tell a story, you might be more successful if you know how language works and why it works that way.
Screenplays are "a story in pictures" - and pictures are also language. See my blog entry on the new iconography:
TURNING ACTION INTO ROMANCE
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/04/turning-action-into-romance.html
It's about a new Iconography of the modern action-romance, images reveal theme: TOUCHED BY AN ALIEN DAW Books Cover image vs. a still from the movie FACE OFF.
So if the concepts teaching and learning are actually just artifacts of the English language, what really does happen in a classroom or when you read a book about how to do something? How are skills transmitted in real life?
A real life transmission situation is better described in terms of music and resonance.
A classroom is more like an orchestra than it is like a mother bird feeding chicks.
I think those who participated in Blake Snyder's screenwriting workshops got that impression of playing in an orchestra he was directing. And orchestral directing is, like writing, a performing art.
In the transmission of an artform from generation to generation, the vast majority of what is transmitted is non-verbal, even sometimes spiritual. And that's true of a verbal artform, so transmission is best done in person.
My own hands-on, in person, orchestra leader was Marion Zimmer Bradley.
No two writers could possibly be more opposite in nature and function than Marion Zimmer Bradley and Jacqueline Lichtenberg, but I absorbed things from her that can not be put into words.
I was recently reminded of all she ignited within me by a query that came to me on twitter after a #scifichat,
(for how to participate in twitter online chats see
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/02/strange-benefit-of-social-networking.html )
@All_Day_SCIfi asked me if I knew of any good books on literary analysis.
Since High School, I've had many encounters with "literary criticism" and none have been informative or useful - perhaps because I'm an originator of the "literary" that others "criticise."
The query did say "analysis" which is what I do to stories, but not just to "literary" stories -- I devour stories delivered in any medium and analyze what makes them work, or not work, and what I would choose to do to the story to make it work or work better.
Many years ago, I was a Guest at The Conference On The Fantastic that Margaret Carter reported on this year:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/international-conference-on-fantastic_25.html
I attended several memorable panels, talks and paper readings at that event, met Stephen King, and had other remarkable experiences all in the space of a few days.
One of them was a paper on Marion Zimmer Bradley - of course I couldn't miss hearing that so I was one of the first to arrive, and got a front seat and listened with absolute attention.
At that time, the Conference was new, and Professors didn't write papers on mass market original novels, nevermind SF or Fantasy. The Conference on the Fantastic has changed my world in that regard.
This particular paper drew some very deep and searching conclusions about Marion, her work, her worldbuilding, and the substance of the themes she was working with. Almost all the conclusions and assumptions in the paper were based on the final paragraph of one Darkover novel.
As it happened, I knew something the writer of the paper did not know, and according to the rules of literary criticism was forbidden to research and discover. What I knew, invalidated everything in the paper resoundingly.
I knew that the final few lines of that novel were not written by Marion, but by an editor. I knew because I'd seen the original and Marion told me how the ending got changed, not because she was incensed about it but because she was illustrating a point about how to work with themes, how to craft a beginning and an ending that match (just as in a symphony -- she was a student of opera, another pursuit I'd recommend).
The change in wording of the final sentence changed the theme drastically. It changed it to a theme she personally did not want her byline associated with but which the editor thought would sell better, and which the editor thought was what she really meant anyway.
She discussed it with me also to illustrate what it means to be a professional fiction writer working in the mass market paperback medium, as opposed to hardcover original where writers have more authority.
It was, at that time, very common for a mass market paperback editor to change a writer's words (legally, it was in the contracts that they could do so) without the writer's knowledge or consent and then print the book. Even when that wasn't in the contract, it was career death to object publically.
The reason for this is simply deadlines. Mass Market moves production faster and on a lower budget with less time and fewer people, and little or no cross-checking at every step. That makes it oddly like film production where, though there is much checking and changing, the writer is simply out of the loop after delivering the script. The pace is frantic for time is money, and decisions are made not on the basis of the art but on the basis of cost.
Objecting to such routine practices in production is the difference between an "artist" and a "commercial fiction writer."
An artist's work depends on every punctuation point and even misspelling - every paragraphing choice and every word choice. Nothing can be changed without destroying the artistic effect.
A commercial fiction writer buries the important stuff, the art, so deep these commercial changes made by many hands along the production channel don't matter.
In this particular case Marion ran into, the change in the ending mattered a lot -- but Marion settled it privately and never had that happen to her again by that editor.
The professor writing a paper about Marion based on that ending could have discovered the origin of those words by asking Marion (she was still alive then and easily reached).
But that's against professor rules. You can't ask an author what they meant to say, even if the author is still alive, and derive a point of "literary criticism" from what the author says they meant to say. You have to work from the printed text.
My personal opinion of literary criticism and scholarship in general reached an all time low at that point, and has stayed there.
Maybe I should change my opinion now that the Conference on the Fantastic has changed my world. It's possible that analyzing mass market work has caused professors to change their rules of evidence, and that would change my opinion.
But I did learn the lesson Marion was demonstrating. Master the layered construction of a story and learn what "they" will change during production, and what you can sneak past them. But also learn how to react professionally when something turns out differently than you intended.
And that's what "storytelling" really is.
The story you have inside you to tell will stay inside you unless you can master the craft of delivering that story to an audience, and Marion's experience with having her ending changed demonstrates what the writer goes through to deliver a story to an audience.
StoryTELLING - delivering - is a mechanical craft that anyone can learn.
But I've never seen anything like this lesson written down in books on writing, or screenwriting.
Many books on screenwriting are only annecdotes about personal experiences and cheerleading to inspire dreams of success. One book like that, more storytelling than instruction, is WRITING THE KILLER TREATMENT (selling your story without a script) by Michael Halperin.
From the title, you'd think it was about how to extract the working parts of your story into an outline that a skilled screenwriter could use to craft a completed script "based on a story by."
But no. It doesn't tell you how to do it. It tells you that you must do it and how much fun and profit there is when you do. It's a $15 book I found to be a total waste of time and money - not because it's a badly written book. No, it's a very entertaining, lively, and zestful bit of inspirational writing. It's the title that's misleading (to me). Others might construe it to mean something more like what's actually inside the book.
Marion's lesson to me in telling me about how the last lines of a novel got changed without her having a chance to object or negotiate was tossed at me in response to something I had said or done -- and in the context of my learning curve, because the lesson was chosen and tailored for me at that time, I learned a thousand things from it.
If you pick up WRITING THE KILLER TREATMENT at the right point in your learning curve, you may learn a thousand lessons and sell screenplay because of it.
A good book on writing craft is one you are ready for.
A bad book on writing craft is one you are beyond - or one you aren't ready for.
If you run into a "bad book" on writing craft, put it on your shelf. There may come a day you need it -- or a day you will refer a student to it because it's just what they need at that point in their learning curve.
Marion also said many times, anyone who can write a literate English sentence can write and sell fiction.
You can teach yourself. You don't need to pay thousands of dollars for classes, or hundreds of dollars for books on writing (libraries are full of craft books for free reading and the internet is replete with hints, tips, and blogs like this one, even online courses that aren't very expensive.)
So where do you start teaching yourself?
Well, once you are well launched on pursuit #1, "What is Storytelling?" you are ready to ask yourself a group of questions that will launch you into more pursuits, some of which may turn into occupations.
Question-asking is the major technique of the storyteller, and I don't just mean the Socratic Method.
The answer to any question lies in the formulation of the question. Get the formulation wrong, and you will never find the answer.
The best place I know of to learn questioning is in the pursuit of an education in the sciences.
Philosophy is another subject area, especially religious philosophy, that trains the mind in questioning.
See my blog entry on Theodore Sturgeon's motto, Ask The Next Question for more on that:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/theodore-sturgeon-ask-next-question.html
So "What is Storytelling?" naturally leads me to ask:
2) What Stories Are You Telling Yourself?
I know of 3 kinds of writers: Deliberate Plotters, Pantsers, and Hybrids.
Deliberate plotters need to know consciously, exactly what they're doing, why and how all laid out in an outline before they do it. They make great formula mystery writers.
Pantsers (the majority, I think) write "by the seat of their pants" -- just make it up as they go along, do what the characters dictate, follow the character's nose through the story. Marion was that kind of writer; completely subconscious.
Hybrids, like me, do it both ways at once, and vacilate back and forth without rhyme or reason. But I've trained myself to be more of a plotter, and Marion often said how she admired my ability to plot.
But what is it that you are doing when you write a story? Is it just plotting?
Most writers (commercial and otherwise) have thousands of stories bursting inside their heads, dream bits in different universes every night, and have a hard time choosing one story to write and finish.
In fact, that's one way to tell if a young child is going to "be a writer."
Marion often said, perhaps quoting Robert A. Heinlein, the only reason to be a writer is that you can't do anything else.
Writers write. And if they can't write, they stare at a blank wall and tell themselves stories. Incessantly.
It is the nature of a writer to glance at a cereal package and leap off into a whole story.
Writers, like actors, sit on shopping mall benches and people-watch, guessing what soap opera each passer-by is wound up in.
Writers don't strain for story ideas. They don't hunt for them. They don't go somewhere else to "get an idea." They have to beat the ideas off with a stick.
For commercial fiction writers, that stick is made of the filter question, "Can I Sell This Story?" "What's the market for this story?"
For the screenwriter, the filter is not about the story at all -- nor even about the idea. The screenwriter searches for "High Concept" which is a wholly different animal than a novelist tames.
Here is one place I discussed the High Concept in screenwriting:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/medium-is-message_19.html
And here I discuss how concept distinguishes a novel from a screenplay
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2006/11/converting-novel-to-screenplay.html
So before you can choose a filter, you have to know which kind of story your mind keeps generating. You have to inventory, contrast, compare, examine, slice and dice, what's floating around inside your mind.
Unless, of course, you're a "pantser" by nature, and looking too closely at the content of your internal stories would be like asking a centipede how it walks.
In that case, you need to focus more externally and examine closely what you do for relaxation, for entertainment. What do you do when you're doing nothing? What carrot do you put on a stick and chase through your daily chores so you can get it for a reward?
Is it a TV show, a movie, a book, all of the above multi-tasked?
Since you are selling FUN, you need to have some in stock to sell. Go have some fun. Acquire that fun, intellectually, emotionally, and/or non-verbally. Repackage it and sell it.
The pursuit of the contents of your internal stories will, most likely, lead you to the pursuit of the study of archetypes, of THE HERO'S JOURNEY and similar insightful works.
Psychology, socialogy, and every kind of -ology listed in any university catalogue can be applied to sorting, categorizing, and warehousing your inventory of internal stories.
One or another of those thousands will have commercial potential.
Why? Because one or another of your stories actually also resides within thousands and thousands of other people.
Those stories that reside in thousands, millions, or everyone are either based in archetypes or they are pure archetypes.
That's why so very often we hear the cries of, "They Stole My Idea!"
They didn't steal it, they got it the same place you did -- "up there somewhere."
I've done twenty posts on Tarot Minor Arcana which discuss slicing and dicing archetypes and how a writer can employ these principles in the process of writing. The posts are listed in these posts:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me.html lists Suit of Swords
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_23.html lists Suit of Pentacles
All of this came out of my own examination of my internal stories.
My external stories, what's been professionally published, are very different - but not unrecognizable.
See next week, Tuesday, on this blog for part II.
This is short, right? *sigh*
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
http://www.amazon.com/review/RSRPV96SU9D4W/ref=cm_cr_rev_detmd_pl?ie=UTF8&cdMsgNo=3&cdPage=1&store=books&cdSort=oldest&cdMsgID=Mx1S6NK71GGPZ5F#Mx1S6NK71GGPZ5F
Is a comment on a review I wrote of SAVE THE CAT!
The review I wrote has drawn 3 marvelous compliments from readers (and from Blake Snyder when he first published the book). This third comment though asks for a list of (currently available) books on screenwriting that would teach what you need to know before SAVE THE CAT!
Any list I could give you would probably be useless in a year or so because many of the titles would be out of print unless they were e-books. And even then, they would likely be out of date in some way because the entire field of "commercial entertainment" is always morphing. I will put a list though at the end of Part II.
And the truth is, though I've read countless books "on screenwriting" (started in grammar school and High School too, reading every book on playwriting the library would stock - inter-library loan books too) I've never read a screenwriting craft book that actually taught how to write a STORY.
Writing a script (stage play or screenplay) is a secondary skill.
You've seen any number of screenplays "based on a story by" -- screenplays have to be based on a story! Before you can write the screenplay, you must craft the story itself or find one already crafted.
Creating that story is actually a separate craft from screenwriting, and it is best learned by studying books on novel craft.
Yet a novel is structured differently than a play.
You have to learn that difference in order to write a story that would be useful to a screenwriter, yourself or someone else.
There is a way to teach yourself that difference and how to leverage that difference into a blockbuster screenplay based on a story by you.
So I'm going to give some examples of where to look, and how to identify a writing textbook that can help you -- but with a focus on what to do with those texts and how to do it.
The reason there are so many books on screenwriting is twofold.
a) there is no "one thing" to master and then you can do it. No two writers are alike, no two people master any performing art the same way, or in the same order. The ones who will sell scripts generally go this route, selecting a few courses, reading a lot of books because multitudes of approaches are needed.
b) there are multitudes of people who want to "become" screenwriters and will read books to dream about it, but will likely never finish any script. They keep buying books and paying for courses so the field grows. The ones who will sell scripts generally don't do it via this route, taking lots and lots of courses and buying lots and lots of books.
How do you teach yourself writing craft for storytelling in any medium?
Story craft is a huge subject. To master it, you must understand that the subject is bigger than you are.
Marion Zimmer Bradley had a 3X5 card tacked over her desk saying nobody ever told you not to be a plumber.
There are more efficient ways of making a living. Writing is the hardest work and the most underpaid except maybe ballet dancing.
Except for the top 1 to 5% of writers, the best paid working writers make less than minimum wage if you add up all the hours spent at it over a lifetime.
Writing is a vocation not an occupation.
It's a Calling.
You must dedicate your whole life to it and be willing to sacrifice everything else (sometimes your sacrifice isn't accepted and your family will miraculously stick by you no matter how you neglect them; but you must be willing, often savagely willing).
Read a lot of biographies. You'll see every really famous writer's biography includes a myriad occupations, all apparently disconnected. The career of writing is composed of odd jobs and a life of study.
So I'm going to list some of the pursuits that might lead through that myriad occupations to a career in writing. And from all this you may discover how to find the books on writing craft and screenwriting craft that will synthesize these pursuits into a sellable screenplay or novel (or both).
1) What is storytelling?
The first pursuit is to define what you are pursuing.
There is a craft called "storytelling" which is a theatrical discipline, and a folk-art.
Storytelling specifically refers to a person who stands up before a live audience and creates with words and dramatic delivery a story usually with a moral or lesson. It is perhaps the most ancient form, and most respected. The original objective may have been cultural continuity, bringing the young into the community.
It isn't exactly what I'm referring to as "storytelling," but all of its craft disciplines are very specifically relevant to learning to teach yourself the craft of commercial fiction writing for text or dramatization.
The most important lesson you can learn from storytellers is audience awareness.
A person who simply mouths off about their own internal fantasies is not story-telling. The "telling" part involves connecting emotionally to the audience and that means being aware of the audience's main fantasies. More about that later.
So the first "pursuit" on our list is to study storytelling from shamanistic origins through Broadway stageplay, even perhaps including folk music performances and today's popular rap forms until you understand exactly what you are aiming to master.
Storytelling is the core origin of "entertainment" - the kissing cousin of the Bardic Craft (traveling living newspaper and history book all wrapped in poetry and a rousing well lubricated singalong).
And all of these living person delivery systems are bundled up today in the "Classroom Teacher" from Kindergarten through 16th Grade. The school librarian or public children's librarian is another manifestation of this. Some even play guitar and sing to the tots!
These teachers are usually our first contact with live entertainment, the first ignition of the desire to share our fantasies, our inner lives, with others.
Teaching is entertainment at its best.
So to teach yourself, you must entertain yourself.
Learning is something else altogether.
I have held elsewhere that there is no such thing as "teaching" -- that one person can not convey either information or a world-view by force into an unwilling or disinterested mind. Even indoctrination doesn't work very well without an entertainment aspect.
But there is "learning" -- and "learning together" as a group activity.
As in "The King And I" -- "by your students you'll be taught" -- if you don't open yourself to absorbing lore from your students, they can not and will not absorb anything from you. So be careful who you set out to teach.
The English words "teaching" and "learning" imply one-sided activity, each disconnected from the other, each able to exist in isolation.
This is a property of the English language, a way of dividing the world into compartments that is distinct from the way languages from other Language Families divide the world.
The formal study of Linguistics, especially neurolinguistic programming, is highly recommended as a pursuit under this first category of pursuits. If you are to use language to tell a story, you might be more successful if you know how language works and why it works that way.
Screenplays are "a story in pictures" - and pictures are also language. See my blog entry on the new iconography:
TURNING ACTION INTO ROMANCE
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/04/turning-action-into-romance.html
It's about a new Iconography of the modern action-romance, images reveal theme: TOUCHED BY AN ALIEN DAW Books Cover image vs. a still from the movie FACE OFF.
So if the concepts teaching and learning are actually just artifacts of the English language, what really does happen in a classroom or when you read a book about how to do something? How are skills transmitted in real life?
A real life transmission situation is better described in terms of music and resonance.
A classroom is more like an orchestra than it is like a mother bird feeding chicks.
I think those who participated in Blake Snyder's screenwriting workshops got that impression of playing in an orchestra he was directing. And orchestral directing is, like writing, a performing art.
In the transmission of an artform from generation to generation, the vast majority of what is transmitted is non-verbal, even sometimes spiritual. And that's true of a verbal artform, so transmission is best done in person.
My own hands-on, in person, orchestra leader was Marion Zimmer Bradley.
No two writers could possibly be more opposite in nature and function than Marion Zimmer Bradley and Jacqueline Lichtenberg, but I absorbed things from her that can not be put into words.
I was recently reminded of all she ignited within me by a query that came to me on twitter after a #scifichat,
(for how to participate in twitter online chats see
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/02/strange-benefit-of-social-networking.html )
@All_Day_SCIfi asked me if I knew of any good books on literary analysis.
Since High School, I've had many encounters with "literary criticism" and none have been informative or useful - perhaps because I'm an originator of the "literary" that others "criticise."
The query did say "analysis" which is what I do to stories, but not just to "literary" stories -- I devour stories delivered in any medium and analyze what makes them work, or not work, and what I would choose to do to the story to make it work or work better.
Many years ago, I was a Guest at The Conference On The Fantastic that Margaret Carter reported on this year:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/international-conference-on-fantastic_25.html
I attended several memorable panels, talks and paper readings at that event, met Stephen King, and had other remarkable experiences all in the space of a few days.
One of them was a paper on Marion Zimmer Bradley - of course I couldn't miss hearing that so I was one of the first to arrive, and got a front seat and listened with absolute attention.
At that time, the Conference was new, and Professors didn't write papers on mass market original novels, nevermind SF or Fantasy. The Conference on the Fantastic has changed my world in that regard.
This particular paper drew some very deep and searching conclusions about Marion, her work, her worldbuilding, and the substance of the themes she was working with. Almost all the conclusions and assumptions in the paper were based on the final paragraph of one Darkover novel.
As it happened, I knew something the writer of the paper did not know, and according to the rules of literary criticism was forbidden to research and discover. What I knew, invalidated everything in the paper resoundingly.
I knew that the final few lines of that novel were not written by Marion, but by an editor. I knew because I'd seen the original and Marion told me how the ending got changed, not because she was incensed about it but because she was illustrating a point about how to work with themes, how to craft a beginning and an ending that match (just as in a symphony -- she was a student of opera, another pursuit I'd recommend).
The change in wording of the final sentence changed the theme drastically. It changed it to a theme she personally did not want her byline associated with but which the editor thought would sell better, and which the editor thought was what she really meant anyway.
She discussed it with me also to illustrate what it means to be a professional fiction writer working in the mass market paperback medium, as opposed to hardcover original where writers have more authority.
It was, at that time, very common for a mass market paperback editor to change a writer's words (legally, it was in the contracts that they could do so) without the writer's knowledge or consent and then print the book. Even when that wasn't in the contract, it was career death to object publically.
The reason for this is simply deadlines. Mass Market moves production faster and on a lower budget with less time and fewer people, and little or no cross-checking at every step. That makes it oddly like film production where, though there is much checking and changing, the writer is simply out of the loop after delivering the script. The pace is frantic for time is money, and decisions are made not on the basis of the art but on the basis of cost.
Objecting to such routine practices in production is the difference between an "artist" and a "commercial fiction writer."
An artist's work depends on every punctuation point and even misspelling - every paragraphing choice and every word choice. Nothing can be changed without destroying the artistic effect.
A commercial fiction writer buries the important stuff, the art, so deep these commercial changes made by many hands along the production channel don't matter.
In this particular case Marion ran into, the change in the ending mattered a lot -- but Marion settled it privately and never had that happen to her again by that editor.
The professor writing a paper about Marion based on that ending could have discovered the origin of those words by asking Marion (she was still alive then and easily reached).
But that's against professor rules. You can't ask an author what they meant to say, even if the author is still alive, and derive a point of "literary criticism" from what the author says they meant to say. You have to work from the printed text.
My personal opinion of literary criticism and scholarship in general reached an all time low at that point, and has stayed there.
Maybe I should change my opinion now that the Conference on the Fantastic has changed my world. It's possible that analyzing mass market work has caused professors to change their rules of evidence, and that would change my opinion.
But I did learn the lesson Marion was demonstrating. Master the layered construction of a story and learn what "they" will change during production, and what you can sneak past them. But also learn how to react professionally when something turns out differently than you intended.
And that's what "storytelling" really is.
The story you have inside you to tell will stay inside you unless you can master the craft of delivering that story to an audience, and Marion's experience with having her ending changed demonstrates what the writer goes through to deliver a story to an audience.
StoryTELLING - delivering - is a mechanical craft that anyone can learn.
But I've never seen anything like this lesson written down in books on writing, or screenwriting.
Many books on screenwriting are only annecdotes about personal experiences and cheerleading to inspire dreams of success. One book like that, more storytelling than instruction, is WRITING THE KILLER TREATMENT (selling your story without a script) by Michael Halperin.
From the title, you'd think it was about how to extract the working parts of your story into an outline that a skilled screenwriter could use to craft a completed script "based on a story by."
But no. It doesn't tell you how to do it. It tells you that you must do it and how much fun and profit there is when you do. It's a $15 book I found to be a total waste of time and money - not because it's a badly written book. No, it's a very entertaining, lively, and zestful bit of inspirational writing. It's the title that's misleading (to me). Others might construe it to mean something more like what's actually inside the book.
Marion's lesson to me in telling me about how the last lines of a novel got changed without her having a chance to object or negotiate was tossed at me in response to something I had said or done -- and in the context of my learning curve, because the lesson was chosen and tailored for me at that time, I learned a thousand things from it.
If you pick up WRITING THE KILLER TREATMENT at the right point in your learning curve, you may learn a thousand lessons and sell screenplay because of it.
A good book on writing craft is one you are ready for.
A bad book on writing craft is one you are beyond - or one you aren't ready for.
If you run into a "bad book" on writing craft, put it on your shelf. There may come a day you need it -- or a day you will refer a student to it because it's just what they need at that point in their learning curve.
Marion also said many times, anyone who can write a literate English sentence can write and sell fiction.
You can teach yourself. You don't need to pay thousands of dollars for classes, or hundreds of dollars for books on writing (libraries are full of craft books for free reading and the internet is replete with hints, tips, and blogs like this one, even online courses that aren't very expensive.)
So where do you start teaching yourself?
Well, once you are well launched on pursuit #1, "What is Storytelling?" you are ready to ask yourself a group of questions that will launch you into more pursuits, some of which may turn into occupations.
Question-asking is the major technique of the storyteller, and I don't just mean the Socratic Method.
The answer to any question lies in the formulation of the question. Get the formulation wrong, and you will never find the answer.
The best place I know of to learn questioning is in the pursuit of an education in the sciences.
Philosophy is another subject area, especially religious philosophy, that trains the mind in questioning.
See my blog entry on Theodore Sturgeon's motto, Ask The Next Question for more on that:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/theodore-sturgeon-ask-next-question.html
So "What is Storytelling?" naturally leads me to ask:
2) What Stories Are You Telling Yourself?
I know of 3 kinds of writers: Deliberate Plotters, Pantsers, and Hybrids.
Deliberate plotters need to know consciously, exactly what they're doing, why and how all laid out in an outline before they do it. They make great formula mystery writers.
Pantsers (the majority, I think) write "by the seat of their pants" -- just make it up as they go along, do what the characters dictate, follow the character's nose through the story. Marion was that kind of writer; completely subconscious.
Hybrids, like me, do it both ways at once, and vacilate back and forth without rhyme or reason. But I've trained myself to be more of a plotter, and Marion often said how she admired my ability to plot.
But what is it that you are doing when you write a story? Is it just plotting?
Most writers (commercial and otherwise) have thousands of stories bursting inside their heads, dream bits in different universes every night, and have a hard time choosing one story to write and finish.
In fact, that's one way to tell if a young child is going to "be a writer."
Marion often said, perhaps quoting Robert A. Heinlein, the only reason to be a writer is that you can't do anything else.
Writers write. And if they can't write, they stare at a blank wall and tell themselves stories. Incessantly.
It is the nature of a writer to glance at a cereal package and leap off into a whole story.
Writers, like actors, sit on shopping mall benches and people-watch, guessing what soap opera each passer-by is wound up in.
Writers don't strain for story ideas. They don't hunt for them. They don't go somewhere else to "get an idea." They have to beat the ideas off with a stick.
For commercial fiction writers, that stick is made of the filter question, "Can I Sell This Story?" "What's the market for this story?"
For the screenwriter, the filter is not about the story at all -- nor even about the idea. The screenwriter searches for "High Concept" which is a wholly different animal than a novelist tames.
Here is one place I discussed the High Concept in screenwriting:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/medium-is-message_19.html
And here I discuss how concept distinguishes a novel from a screenplay
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2006/11/converting-novel-to-screenplay.html
So before you can choose a filter, you have to know which kind of story your mind keeps generating. You have to inventory, contrast, compare, examine, slice and dice, what's floating around inside your mind.
Unless, of course, you're a "pantser" by nature, and looking too closely at the content of your internal stories would be like asking a centipede how it walks.
In that case, you need to focus more externally and examine closely what you do for relaxation, for entertainment. What do you do when you're doing nothing? What carrot do you put on a stick and chase through your daily chores so you can get it for a reward?
Is it a TV show, a movie, a book, all of the above multi-tasked?
Since you are selling FUN, you need to have some in stock to sell. Go have some fun. Acquire that fun, intellectually, emotionally, and/or non-verbally. Repackage it and sell it.
The pursuit of the contents of your internal stories will, most likely, lead you to the pursuit of the study of archetypes, of THE HERO'S JOURNEY and similar insightful works.
Psychology, socialogy, and every kind of -ology listed in any university catalogue can be applied to sorting, categorizing, and warehousing your inventory of internal stories.
One or another of those thousands will have commercial potential.
Why? Because one or another of your stories actually also resides within thousands and thousands of other people.
Those stories that reside in thousands, millions, or everyone are either based in archetypes or they are pure archetypes.
That's why so very often we hear the cries of, "They Stole My Idea!"
They didn't steal it, they got it the same place you did -- "up there somewhere."
I've done twenty posts on Tarot Minor Arcana which discuss slicing and dicing archetypes and how a writer can employ these principles in the process of writing. The posts are listed in these posts:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me.html lists Suit of Swords
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_23.html lists Suit of Pentacles
All of this came out of my own examination of my internal stories.
My external stories, what's been professionally published, are very different - but not unrecognizable.
See next week, Tuesday, on this blog for part II.
This is short, right? *sigh*
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Monday, April 19, 2010
Silly Season: Time for the BookLovers Convention
Yep, it's spring, so yep, it's time for the start of the silly season: the gi-normous Romantic Times BOOKlovers Convention, this year held in Columbus, OH. We're talking two or more thousand readers, writers, booksellers, librarians and other industry professionals, plus four hundred or more (I lose count at these things) published authors. Oh, and a handful of male cover models.
Do you now see why it's the silly season?
It's great fun, a super time for readers and authors to meet, a super time for authors to connect with other authors, a super time for librarians and booksellers...and I think the male cover models endure the best they can.
Here's my schedule for those so inclined:
PRE-CON Aspiring and Advanced Writer Workshops
Monday 4/26
10:15-12:00: FINDING MR. GOODWRITE: Linnea Sinclair and Stacey Kade
1:30-2:45: POINT of VIEW: Linnea Sinclair & Stacey Kade
4-5 PM RESEARCH: Linnea Sinclair & Stacey Kade
Tuesday 4/27
TUES 10 – 11AM: STAYING INSPIRED - : Linnea Sinclair & Stacey Kade
3:00-3:45: ASK US ANYTHING/Smith/Parmley/Sinclair/Groe/Lee/Kade
Yeah, Stacey and I do the dog & pony together a lot. We write from different philosophies but we end up at the same place. We're also crit partners, so it's fun for students to see how authors who don't agree on the philosophies of the craft still work together.
MAIN CONVENTION PROGRAMMING
Wednesday 4/28
2:30 PM - 3:30 PM
CRAFT: FROM REGENCY TO RIGEV V: WORLD BUILDING ACROSS THE GENRES
Panelists: Cathy Clamp aka Cat Adams, Lynne Connolly, Donna MacMeans, Karen Miller aka KE Mills, Linnea Sinclair
Do you now see why it's the silly season?
It's great fun, a super time for readers and authors to meet, a super time for authors to connect with other authors, a super time for librarians and booksellers...and I think the male cover models endure the best they can.
Here's my schedule for those so inclined:
PRE-CON Aspiring and Advanced Writer Workshops
Monday 4/26
10:15-12:00: FINDING MR. GOODWRITE: Linnea Sinclair and Stacey Kade
1:30-2:45: POINT of VIEW: Linnea Sinclair & Stacey Kade
4-5 PM RESEARCH: Linnea Sinclair & Stacey Kade
Tuesday 4/27
TUES 10 – 11AM: STAYING INSPIRED - : Linnea Sinclair & Stacey Kade
3:00-3:45: ASK US ANYTHING/Smith/Parmley/Sinclair/Groe/Lee/Kade
Yeah, Stacey and I do the dog & pony together a lot. We write from different philosophies but we end up at the same place. We're also crit partners, so it's fun for students to see how authors who don't agree on the philosophies of the craft still work together.
MAIN CONVENTION PROGRAMMING
Wednesday 4/28
2:30 PM - 3:30 PM
CRAFT: FROM REGENCY TO RIGEV V: WORLD BUILDING ACROSS THE GENRES
Panelists: Cathy Clamp aka Cat Adams, Lynne Connolly, Donna MacMeans, Karen Miller aka KE Mills, Linnea Sinclair
6:15 PM - 7:15 PM
READER: INTERGALACTIC BAR AND GRILLE PARTY (This is THE big party for this genre, kids!)
Hosted by: Catherine Asaro, Jess Granger, Cindy Holby aka Colby Hodge, Stacey Klemstein aka Stacey Kade, Isabo Kelly, Janet Miller aka Cricket Starr, Karin Shah and Linnea Sinclair
Friday 4/30
11:15 AM - 12:15 PM
CRAFT: PITCHES AND BLURBS AND TAG LINES, OH MY!
Panelists: Gwynne Forster, Stacey Klemstein aka Stacey Kade, Jackie Kessler, Linnea
Sinclair
11:15 AM - 12:15 PM
CRAFT: PITCHES AND BLURBS AND TAG LINES, OH MY!
Panelists: Gwynne Forster, Stacey Klemstein aka Stacey Kade, Jackie Kessler, Linnea
Sinclair1:30 PM - 2:30 PM SPECIALTY: WRITING KICK-ASS FIGHT SCENES
Panelists: Leanna Renee Hieber, Isabo Kelly, Stacey Klemstein aka Stacey Kade, and Linnea Sinclair
2:45 PM - 3:45 PM
SPECIALTY: KICKING BUTT AND KISSING HEROS: BEING STRONG AND FEMININE AT THE SAME TIME IN FICTION
Panelists: Karen Miller aka KE Mills, Linnea Sinclair, Jeri Smith-Ready
Saturday 5/1
BOOKFAIR 11am-2pm OPEN TO THE PUBLIC! This is a phenomenal time--all your authors in one place.
Next year the con's in Los Angeles, CA. FYI.
Hope to see you all in OH for this one! ~Linnea
Linnea Sinclair
// Interstellar Adventure Infused with Romance//
Available Now from Bantam: Rebels and Lovers (Book 4)
http://www.linneasinclair.com/
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Gaia's Zits -- or Of Lice and Men
Suppose we live on a sentient being?
It's not a new idea. There's James Lovelock's and William Golding's Gaia Theory (Earth as a single organism), and books by Asimov, Orson Scott Card, the Helliconia trilogy, and many more. That doesn't mean that "it" cannot be "done" again.
We've all spoken of "Mother Earth", or "Mother Nature" but, I wonder, would a planet be male or female or hermaphrodite or a barren neuter?
The Earth breathes. It breaks out. Its skin crawls and wrinkles and shifts. It has warm flashes and cold spells. Frozen, liquid filled, life bearing comets might or might not be compared to spermatozoa... should I compare planets to giant clams in the oceans? A star's life cycle might be compared to that of the mythical phoenix.
Before the eruption, I was developing a thought about the arrogance of mankind, not merely politicians at Kyoto or Copenhagen, but of all of us to think that we have changed or could change the climate. It is true that a sufficient overpopulation of fleas can kill a dog. I accept that. But, I think we're more of the order of lice.
Entertaining gateway page to information about headlice
http://www.headlice.org/faq/index.htm
Fascinating piece on how volcanoes have shaped human history
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8622520.stm
If you look at the cross-section of an animated volcano, you may be struck by its similarity to a pustule
I've no idea if a host's acne outbreak is disastrous for headlice, but volcanic eruptions are potentially very serious for humans.
In Europe it is feared that the eruption of Eyjafjallajoekull will set off one of the Earth's most dangerous volcano systems: Katla, and perhaps Hekla. It sounds counter intuitive, but if the weight of a glacier keeps an icy lid on a volcano, and that glacier is melted, then there could be a chain reaction.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/21/icelandic-fissure-eruptuon-triggers-worries/
http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2010/03/icelandic-volcanic-eruption-cycle.html
"Eyjafjallajokull has blown three times in the past thousand years," Dr McGarvie told The Times, "in 920AD, in 1612 and between 1821 and 1823. Each time it set off Katla." The likelihood of Katla blowing could become clear "in a few weeks or a few months", he said.
Mount Hekla is one of Iceland Scotland
"Iceland’s Laki volcano erupted in 1783.... The winter of 1784 was also one of the longest and coldest on record in North America. New England reported a record stretch of below-zero temperatures and New Jersey reported record snow accumulation. The Mississippi River also reportedly froze in New Orleans."(news.yahoo)
See more at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis
PS, Rusty's link to his tongue-in-cheek blog on a similar topic is http://unitedstatesofscamerica.blogspot.com/2010/04/iceland-saves-earth.html
All the best,
Rowena Cherry
SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/
It's not a new idea. There's James Lovelock's and William Golding's Gaia Theory (Earth as a single organism), and books by Asimov, Orson Scott Card, the Helliconia trilogy, and many more. That doesn't mean that "it" cannot be "done" again.
We've all spoken of "Mother Earth", or "Mother Nature" but, I wonder, would a planet be male or female or hermaphrodite or a barren neuter?
The Earth breathes. It breaks out. Its skin crawls and wrinkles and shifts. It has warm flashes and cold spells. Frozen, liquid filled, life bearing comets might or might not be compared to spermatozoa... should I compare planets to giant clams in the oceans? A star's life cycle might be compared to that of the mythical phoenix.
Before the eruption, I was developing a thought about the arrogance of mankind, not merely politicians at Kyoto or Copenhagen, but of all of us to think that we have changed or could change the climate. It is true that a sufficient overpopulation of fleas can kill a dog. I accept that. But, I think we're more of the order of lice.
Entertaining gateway page to information about headlice
http://www.headlice.org/faq/index.htm
Fascinating piece on how volcanoes have shaped human history
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8622520.stm
If you look at the cross-section of an animated volcano, you may be struck by its similarity to a pustule
I've no idea if a host's acne outbreak is disastrous for headlice, but volcanic eruptions are potentially very serious for humans.
In Europe it is feared that the eruption of Eyjafjallajoekull will set off one of the Earth's most dangerous volcano systems: Katla, and perhaps Hekla. It sounds counter intuitive, but if the weight of a glacier keeps an icy lid on a volcano, and that glacier is melted, then there could be a chain reaction.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/21/icelandic-fissure-eruptuon-triggers-worries/
http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2010/03/icelandic-volcanic-eruption-cycle.html
"Eyjafjallajokull has blown three times in the past thousand years," Dr McGarvie told The Times, "in 920AD, in 1612 and between 1821 and 1823. Each time it set off Katla." The likelihood of Katla blowing could become clear "in a few weeks or a few months", he said.
Maybe life will end in December of 2012! This cycle could go different ways for us, but either way, there's not a lot we can do about it. We cannot stop volcanoes from erupting.
Apparently, the volcanic cloud over Europe is too high to be seen from the ground at least from southern Britain, and the white clouds of it as seen from the air are quite pretty. The problem for aviation, apart from visibility, is the glass in the clouds. Glass is what can melt in the extra heat of an engine, then solidify again. However, it is now possible to fly below the cloud and around the periphery, and the cloud will thin as it spreads.
The high level, and very white volcanic ash-and-glass clouds could reflect heat away from Earth.... (by the way, one can now buy sunscreen in the form of a face powder!) in which case, "global warming" will be mitigated.
Or, the subsequent eruptions could be violent enough to jolt the Earth off her current axis, in which case, the North Pole will shift (if it hasn't already). Or, the subsequent eruptions could cause "insta-melt" of a lot more than the glacier in which Eyjafjallajoekull is set. Eyjafjallajoekull has four vents, I'm told, and it erupted through a glacier which may have caused larger grit lumps and a greater volume of steam than might otherwise have been the case. If the next round --if there is a next round-- causes a great deal of insta-melt, there could be tsunamis and flooding.
Maybe Mother Nature will wash the lice out of her hair. Was Noah's flood related to the Icelandic volcanoes? It's interesting to reflect that an Eyjafjallajoekull eruption has been know to last for two years, and that 5.33 million years ago, the Mediterranean sea is thought to have filled within a mere two years. Like a storm drain. And 9,500 years ago, a small flood created the Black Sea. Was that global warming? Or an Eyjafjallajoekull effect.
Just to digress a little more, next winter --or the one after that-- could be cold enough to freeze the Mississippi.
"Iceland’s Laki volcano erupted in 1783.... The winter of 1784 was also one of the longest and coldest on record in North America. New England reported a record stretch of below-zero temperatures and New Jersey reported record snow accumulation. The Mississippi River also reportedly froze in New Orleans."(news.yahoo)
On the other hand, if global flooding and famine and cooling are (or may be) coming, are our priorities as science fiction, alien romance, and Romance writers in the right place?
Footnote.
Lovelock's initial hypothesis
James Lovelock defined Gaia as:
- a complex entity involving the Earth's biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet.
See more at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis
PS, Rusty's link to his tongue-in-cheek blog on a similar topic is http://unitedstatesofscamerica.blogspot.com/2010/04/iceland-saves-earth.html
All the best,
Rowena Cherry
SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Technology Nostalgia
Lately FORWARD DAY BY DAY, an Anglican daily devotional guide, has been reprinting meditations selected from issues throughout its 75-year run. This past Sunday a meditation from 1936 began with: “After driving a motor car all day, you are tired partly because so many pictures, so many things, come before you in a very short time. In twelve hours you see miles and miles of countryside, cities, people, gas stations, other cars. Then at night you arrive home and you are at peace.” (What would this writer think if he or she could experience the pace of a typical day in our time?)
The point of the meditation is the need to rest and “refuel” (spiritually) at frequent intervals during life’s journey. What it brought to my mind, though, was the quaint image of a long trip in a “motor car”—a novel activity in that era when reliable cars, good highways, and convenient gas stations were still relatively new—as a daring, challenging experience. It also reminded me of a book I recently read about the history of the Burma Shave signs (remember those?—the last one was officially taken down in the early 1960s). When first invented, this mode of advertising was a daring new experiment. Now it’s material for reminiscence about the “olden days.”
The reading reminded me, too, of a poem by Kipling with the refrain, “Farewell, Romance!” The old ways and artifacts appear “romantic” in the sense of adventurous and exotic. The caveman complains that the displacement of flint spear heads by metal ones will mean the death of romance. Likewise, the replacement of crossbows by firearms. The stagecoach is romantic; the noisy, smoke-spewing train isn’t. Thoreau, too, associates trains with the soulless pace of modern life; “the railroad rides on us,” he says. Nowadays, though, trains feel quaint and romantic to us, a subject for folk songs. Whatever has faded into the past takes on a glow of nostalgia. Kipling’s poem ends, “He [Romance] taught his chosen bards to say, Our king was with us yesterday.”
We Boomers idealize old black-and-white TV programs. Our parents lamented the disappearance of radio dramas. The country song, “I Miss Back Then,” celebrating the alleged innocent simplicity of what sounds like the 1950s, lists a plethora of material and social phenomena the singer misses. (Many of which I happily do without. Baloney sandwiches on white bread with mayonnaise? They nauseated me then, and I wouldn’t eat one now except as an alternative to starvation in the wilderness.) What cutting-edge technology of today will our grandchildren, when they reach retirement age, look back on as symbolic of a simpler, happier time? Will they walk around with miniature computer links in their ears, Bluetooth style, viewing data on a holographic upload that floats in front of their eyes, and sigh for the good old days of laptops, notepads, and iPods? Will they reminisce to their kids about gathering around the game console with friends? When e-books become ubiquitous, will old fogies regret the passing of paper books, magazines, and newspapers? Will they sigh over the replacement of paper Christmas and birthday cards by e-cards? (Some people think newspapers are going that way already. As for me, you’ll deprive me of my daily papers in the driveway, not to mention tangible mail in the mailbox, when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers.)
If you’re around my age, does it ever give you a bit of a chill to stop and think that, to our grandchildren, the 1960s are HISTORY? Even for our two youngest children, in their childhood the Vietnam conflict lay farther in the past for them than World War II (which was, to me, HISTORY—after all, it ended three years before I was born) did for me at that age.
I’ve definitely entered the geezin’ stage of life. Cars today are far safer (and mostly more fuel-economical) than the vehicles of my childhood and teens, but when was the last time you rode in one (other than a van or SUV) that could seat more than five people in roomy comfort? The available selection of TV programming may be better than ever, but they certainly don't make movies the way they used to, do they?
Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt
The point of the meditation is the need to rest and “refuel” (spiritually) at frequent intervals during life’s journey. What it brought to my mind, though, was the quaint image of a long trip in a “motor car”—a novel activity in that era when reliable cars, good highways, and convenient gas stations were still relatively new—as a daring, challenging experience. It also reminded me of a book I recently read about the history of the Burma Shave signs (remember those?—the last one was officially taken down in the early 1960s). When first invented, this mode of advertising was a daring new experiment. Now it’s material for reminiscence about the “olden days.”
The reading reminded me, too, of a poem by Kipling with the refrain, “Farewell, Romance!” The old ways and artifacts appear “romantic” in the sense of adventurous and exotic. The caveman complains that the displacement of flint spear heads by metal ones will mean the death of romance. Likewise, the replacement of crossbows by firearms. The stagecoach is romantic; the noisy, smoke-spewing train isn’t. Thoreau, too, associates trains with the soulless pace of modern life; “the railroad rides on us,” he says. Nowadays, though, trains feel quaint and romantic to us, a subject for folk songs. Whatever has faded into the past takes on a glow of nostalgia. Kipling’s poem ends, “He [Romance] taught his chosen bards to say, Our king was with us yesterday.”
We Boomers idealize old black-and-white TV programs. Our parents lamented the disappearance of radio dramas. The country song, “I Miss Back Then,” celebrating the alleged innocent simplicity of what sounds like the 1950s, lists a plethora of material and social phenomena the singer misses. (Many of which I happily do without. Baloney sandwiches on white bread with mayonnaise? They nauseated me then, and I wouldn’t eat one now except as an alternative to starvation in the wilderness.) What cutting-edge technology of today will our grandchildren, when they reach retirement age, look back on as symbolic of a simpler, happier time? Will they walk around with miniature computer links in their ears, Bluetooth style, viewing data on a holographic upload that floats in front of their eyes, and sigh for the good old days of laptops, notepads, and iPods? Will they reminisce to their kids about gathering around the game console with friends? When e-books become ubiquitous, will old fogies regret the passing of paper books, magazines, and newspapers? Will they sigh over the replacement of paper Christmas and birthday cards by e-cards? (Some people think newspapers are going that way already. As for me, you’ll deprive me of my daily papers in the driveway, not to mention tangible mail in the mailbox, when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers.)
If you’re around my age, does it ever give you a bit of a chill to stop and think that, to our grandchildren, the 1960s are HISTORY? Even for our two youngest children, in their childhood the Vietnam conflict lay farther in the past for them than World War II (which was, to me, HISTORY—after all, it ended three years before I was born) did for me at that age.
I’ve definitely entered the geezin’ stage of life. Cars today are far safer (and mostly more fuel-economical) than the vehicles of my childhood and teens, but when was the last time you rode in one (other than a van or SUV) that could seat more than five people in roomy comfort? The available selection of TV programming may be better than ever, but they certainly don't make movies the way they used to, do they?
Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Turning Action Into Romance
You all know that I'm an SF writer and professional reviewer - if not, please look at this post on the inside of a reviewer's life.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/12/glimpse-of-reviewers-life.html
The subject I've been pursuing here for the last few years is the converging of the SF/F fields and the Romance field, and the problem of how Romance can gain the high regard of the general public that it so richly deserves.
Recently we've seen the release of yet another Romantic Comedy film, SHE'S OUT OF MY LEAGUE, March 12, 2010:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0815236/
And we ask why is "Romance" only acceptable in Hollywood as a "Comedy?"
OK, there was ROMANCING THE STONE and THE AFRICAN QUEEN, but think about Romance-hybrids and box-office respect. Almost all the recent romance films are hybrid genre.
So we note the commentary on IMDB for SHE'S OUT OF MY LEAGUE, and the whole focus on "it's funny" rather than "it's romantic."
The hybrid genre labels as I've pointed out in previous posts are formulated as DECORATION + PLOT-STYLE. SHE'S OUT OF MY LEAGUE is a ROMANTIC COMEDY - a plot structured as a comedy with romance as the decoration. And rom-com is a big seller in Hollywood now, especially in indie films.
Look at the film AVATAR. It's action with relationship as a decoration. At most, Romance is a complication to the action-plot.
But are we seeing a trend gathering toward merging the plot and the decoration into a single, united whole?
What would it take to accomplish that merger?
In a word, CHARACTER.
The essential core of the main character's character has to shift in order to merge the two elements of a hybridized genre. What is considered admirable in a person of solid character has to change. That is, the value, or the standard of admirability has to change from being entirely of one of the genres to being a balance of both genres.
When this kind of shift happens in a culture, new icons emerge, new IMAGES that "tell the story."
Remember what Blake Snyder taught us in SAVE THE CAT! which he learned from his elder mentors - a screenplay is a story in pictures. And remember what I noted about the film AVATAR
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/02/tv-shows-leverage-and-psych.html
The requirement for a broad "reach" needed for a high budget film is that the whole story is pictures, not dialogue, and the pictures have to translate across cultural boundaries -- the pictures have to be exportable because the USA market can't support high budget films by itself.
Text-fiction writers have to evoke images with words, and so must choose images just as deliberately as a high budget film writer would.
The audience has become fragmented in the USA because our culture has shattered and is reforming around new icons, new images. The hybrid-genre fiction we're seeing now is a result of the search for new icons as change accelerates.
Here are two images to ponder deeply because they say "it all." These might be blended into a new icon if we can find the common meaning.
The cover of TOUCHED BY AN ALIEN by Gini Koch (DAW Books April 2010)
Gini Koch is a pen name of Jeanne Cook
http://eposic.net/blog/archives/196
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51tZtzTeQjL._SL500_AA240_.jpg
Note he's holding a gun in his left hand while she's holding a gun in her right. It's two people turned toward each other, guns in hand but neglected.
Now look at this still from a movie titled FACE/OFF.
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Film/Pix/pictures/2009/5/21/1242924794594/John-Travolta-and-Nicolas-001.jpg
Pay off ... John Travolta and Nicolas Cage in Face/Off. Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext/Paramount
Two men stand almost arm's length from each other, each holding a gun out straight into the other's face, faced-off.
I ran across this image in an article referenced on twitter:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/may/22/shane-black-12-rounds
The subtitle of the article:
Summer means action at the cinema, so here's Shane Black, the master of the art, giving Sam Delaney a masterclass in thrills
THRILLS???? Romance isn't thrill packed?
Notice the stance in the FACE/OFF photo - the distance - and how the guns are held. The IMAGE is all, the COMPOSITION carries the theme non-verbally.
Now just ponder and ponder that.
TOUCHED BY AN ALIEN (an excellent novel!) back cover copy reads thusly:
---------
IT WAS JUST ANOTHER DAY IN ARIZONA AND THEN THE MONSTER SHOWED UP --
Marketing manager Katherine "Kitty" Katt had just finished a day on jury duty. When she stepped out of the Pueblo Caliente courthouse, all she was thinking about was the work she had to get caught up on. Then her attention was caught by a fight between a couple - a domestic dispute that looked like it was about to turn ugly. But ugly didn't even begin to cover it when the "man" suddenly transformed into a huge, winged monster right out of a grade Z science fiction movie and went on a deadly killing spree. In hindsight, Kitty realized she probably should have panicked and run screaming the way everyone around her was doing. Instead she got mad, searched her purse for a weapon, and, armed with a Mont Blanc pen, sprinted into action to take down the alien.
In the middle of all the screeching and the ensuing chaos, a tall handsome hunk of a guy in an Armani suit suddenly appeared beside her, examined the body, introduced himself as Jeff Martini with "the agency," called out to an Armani-clad colleague to perform crowd control, and then insisted on leading her to a nearby limo to talk to his "boss."
And that was how Kitty's new life among the aliens began ...
-----------
TOUCHED BY AN ALIEN delivers as promised, luscious hunk, complex and progressively sexual relationship, cognitive dissonance, and a heroine modeled after "Mrs. King" of "Scarecrow And Mrs. King" the TV show. Solidly crafted writing with the complex backgrounding handled with a minimum of expository lumping. Highly recommended.
But not recommended just as a good read. This is a book that explains a lot about what's going on in this real world of publishing.
Notice this "science so advanced it seems like magic" novel is published by DAW as Science Fiction, not fantasy - and is styled with all the relationship and sexuality you see in modern Paranormal Romance. The science is only science because we are told it is science not magic, but there are strong "magical" elements there too.
Now study those two images again and think ICON.
Think of the writing styling emerging from the cross-genre trends, especially hybrid-Romance styles, and now holding those images in mind, let's look at the entire field from the point of view of a literary agent.
There's a wonderful blog I've been following for some time by a really good agent who also seems to be a very good hearted person (not an odd combination among agents, mind you, but Rachelle Gardner here is an excellent example of that hybrid combination. Just read some of her other blog entries to see that.)
I found the following blog entry where Rachelle presents a query from a new author seeking representation that grabbed her attention and prompted her to ask to see the manuscript.
http://cba-ramblings.blogspot.com/2010/03/query-critique-dealers-of-light.html
I read the query and the 30 or so responses already posted with great attention, noting it was fraught with passive verbs and passive sentence constructs indicating passive plotting or wrong choice of POV character that would disqualify it from consideration as a screenplay pitch, or as a novel query in SF or Fantasy genres.
I thought about the two iconic images posted above, and about TOUCHED BY AN ALIEN, and about everything marketers, book publicists, agents, editors and most of all film producers have gone to such great lengths to teach me about how to project professionalism into concise pitches.
TOUCHED BY AN ALIEN is almost the same novel as the one described in this query Rachelle Gardner posted, except for Kitt's attitude, which is anything but passive. Kitt is not "drawn into" this conflict; she plunges into it bare-fisted!
Note the only passive construction in the back cover copy of TOUCHED BY AN ALIEN is "her attention was caught." I would have rewritten that to "when she saw" and would have tweaked a lot of the other wording in that copy to sharpen it according to the rules another literary agent, Kristen Nelson illustrated with Linnea Sinclair's back cover copy at Denvention III:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/08/denvention-3-walk-con.html
But the TOUCHED BY AN ALIEN cover copy gets the point across about this very interesting woman, Kitty, a MANAGER heading toward the peak of her formidable career, who reacts out of the core of her personality to take charge and exercise her innate sense of responsibility and thereby plunges herself into a whole new reality and a new life.
That "reacts out of the core" and "plunges into" phrasing comes from Blake Snyder's SAVE THE CAT! series which explains why these attitudes are required in a POV character and this construction is an absolute requirement for a feature film screenplay.
I thought about all the kick-ass heroines leading the charge in Paranormal Romance acceptability to the general audiences and especially about the size of the world-audience for AVATAR.
One of the signatures of the Fantasy-SF-kick-ass-heroine novel is that the male and female leads have to be equals, whether they both know it or not. Very often the conflict is about establishing that equality as a prerequisite for a blazing-hot-romance.
If they are not equals, then any sexual relationship smacks of abuse to some (not all) of our modern sensibilities.
Part of our culture has already adopted this icon of equality as the ideal in relationship, and part has rejected it resoundingly. The interesting thing is that sometimes both parts reside in the same reader. The question then becomes, "Are the proportions of these parts that accept or reject equality still changing? If so, in which direction?"
Remember the 1983 film SCARECROW & MRS. KING, and the 2005 film MR.& MRS. SMITH which I discussed:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-does-she-see-in-him.html
Compare the plot of MR.& MRS. SMITH which starts and ends in a marriage counselor's office with the query chosen by Rachelle Gardner.
We're in the midst of a churning harrowing of our cultural values. The pivot point may have been signified by the film WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT, the story of Tina Turner's emergence from abused and neglected child to towering icon of the music scene.
WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT (1993)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108551/
Compare that with the film of same title about modernizing the dating game
WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT (2002)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425645/
Notice the 10 and 20 year intervals and correlate with the generational tastes issues I discussed with respect to Pluto transits:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html
And now, something new is happening.
Look again at the images above - the two with guns drawn, facing one another vs. guns hanging neglected in lax hands and the two embracing one another.
I look at that and I see two images of relationship based on equality of power, authority, efficaciousness, fearlessness, self-respect and mutual respect.
What do you see?
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/12/glimpse-of-reviewers-life.html
The subject I've been pursuing here for the last few years is the converging of the SF/F fields and the Romance field, and the problem of how Romance can gain the high regard of the general public that it so richly deserves.
Recently we've seen the release of yet another Romantic Comedy film, SHE'S OUT OF MY LEAGUE, March 12, 2010:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0815236/
And we ask why is "Romance" only acceptable in Hollywood as a "Comedy?"
OK, there was ROMANCING THE STONE and THE AFRICAN QUEEN, but think about Romance-hybrids and box-office respect. Almost all the recent romance films are hybrid genre.
So we note the commentary on IMDB for SHE'S OUT OF MY LEAGUE, and the whole focus on "it's funny" rather than "it's romantic."
The hybrid genre labels as I've pointed out in previous posts are formulated as DECORATION + PLOT-STYLE. SHE'S OUT OF MY LEAGUE is a ROMANTIC COMEDY - a plot structured as a comedy with romance as the decoration. And rom-com is a big seller in Hollywood now, especially in indie films.
Look at the film AVATAR. It's action with relationship as a decoration. At most, Romance is a complication to the action-plot.
But are we seeing a trend gathering toward merging the plot and the decoration into a single, united whole?
What would it take to accomplish that merger?
In a word, CHARACTER.
The essential core of the main character's character has to shift in order to merge the two elements of a hybridized genre. What is considered admirable in a person of solid character has to change. That is, the value, or the standard of admirability has to change from being entirely of one of the genres to being a balance of both genres.
When this kind of shift happens in a culture, new icons emerge, new IMAGES that "tell the story."
Remember what Blake Snyder taught us in SAVE THE CAT! which he learned from his elder mentors - a screenplay is a story in pictures. And remember what I noted about the film AVATAR
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/02/tv-shows-leverage-and-psych.html
The requirement for a broad "reach" needed for a high budget film is that the whole story is pictures, not dialogue, and the pictures have to translate across cultural boundaries -- the pictures have to be exportable because the USA market can't support high budget films by itself.
Text-fiction writers have to evoke images with words, and so must choose images just as deliberately as a high budget film writer would.
The audience has become fragmented in the USA because our culture has shattered and is reforming around new icons, new images. The hybrid-genre fiction we're seeing now is a result of the search for new icons as change accelerates.
Here are two images to ponder deeply because they say "it all." These might be blended into a new icon if we can find the common meaning.
The cover of TOUCHED BY AN ALIEN by Gini Koch (DAW Books April 2010)
Gini Koch is a pen name of Jeanne Cook
http://eposic.net/blog/archives/196
Note he's holding a gun in his left hand while she's holding a gun in her right. It's two people turned toward each other, guns in hand but neglected.
Now look at this still from a movie titled FACE/OFF.
Pay off ... John Travolta and Nicolas Cage in Face/Off. Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext/Paramount
Two men stand almost arm's length from each other, each holding a gun out straight into the other's face, faced-off.
I ran across this image in an article referenced on twitter:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/may/22/shane-black-12-rounds
The subtitle of the article:
Summer means action at the cinema, so here's Shane Black, the master of the art, giving Sam Delaney a masterclass in thrills
THRILLS???? Romance isn't thrill packed?
Notice the stance in the FACE/OFF photo - the distance - and how the guns are held. The IMAGE is all, the COMPOSITION carries the theme non-verbally.
Now just ponder and ponder that.
TOUCHED BY AN ALIEN (an excellent novel!) back cover copy reads thusly:
---------
IT WAS JUST ANOTHER DAY IN ARIZONA AND THEN THE MONSTER SHOWED UP --
Marketing manager Katherine "Kitty" Katt had just finished a day on jury duty. When she stepped out of the Pueblo Caliente courthouse, all she was thinking about was the work she had to get caught up on. Then her attention was caught by a fight between a couple - a domestic dispute that looked like it was about to turn ugly. But ugly didn't even begin to cover it when the "man" suddenly transformed into a huge, winged monster right out of a grade Z science fiction movie and went on a deadly killing spree. In hindsight, Kitty realized she probably should have panicked and run screaming the way everyone around her was doing. Instead she got mad, searched her purse for a weapon, and, armed with a Mont Blanc pen, sprinted into action to take down the alien.
In the middle of all the screeching and the ensuing chaos, a tall handsome hunk of a guy in an Armani suit suddenly appeared beside her, examined the body, introduced himself as Jeff Martini with "the agency," called out to an Armani-clad colleague to perform crowd control, and then insisted on leading her to a nearby limo to talk to his "boss."
And that was how Kitty's new life among the aliens began ...
-----------
TOUCHED BY AN ALIEN delivers as promised, luscious hunk, complex and progressively sexual relationship, cognitive dissonance, and a heroine modeled after "Mrs. King" of "Scarecrow And Mrs. King" the TV show. Solidly crafted writing with the complex backgrounding handled with a minimum of expository lumping. Highly recommended.
But not recommended just as a good read. This is a book that explains a lot about what's going on in this real world of publishing.
Notice this "science so advanced it seems like magic" novel is published by DAW as Science Fiction, not fantasy - and is styled with all the relationship and sexuality you see in modern Paranormal Romance. The science is only science because we are told it is science not magic, but there are strong "magical" elements there too.
Now study those two images again and think ICON.
Think of the writing styling emerging from the cross-genre trends, especially hybrid-Romance styles, and now holding those images in mind, let's look at the entire field from the point of view of a literary agent.
There's a wonderful blog I've been following for some time by a really good agent who also seems to be a very good hearted person (not an odd combination among agents, mind you, but Rachelle Gardner here is an excellent example of that hybrid combination. Just read some of her other blog entries to see that.)
I found the following blog entry where Rachelle presents a query from a new author seeking representation that grabbed her attention and prompted her to ask to see the manuscript.
http://cba-ramblings.blogspot.com/2010/03/query-critique-dealers-of-light.html
I read the query and the 30 or so responses already posted with great attention, noting it was fraught with passive verbs and passive sentence constructs indicating passive plotting or wrong choice of POV character that would disqualify it from consideration as a screenplay pitch, or as a novel query in SF or Fantasy genres.
I thought about the two iconic images posted above, and about TOUCHED BY AN ALIEN, and about everything marketers, book publicists, agents, editors and most of all film producers have gone to such great lengths to teach me about how to project professionalism into concise pitches.
TOUCHED BY AN ALIEN is almost the same novel as the one described in this query Rachelle Gardner posted, except for Kitt's attitude, which is anything but passive. Kitt is not "drawn into" this conflict; she plunges into it bare-fisted!
Note the only passive construction in the back cover copy of TOUCHED BY AN ALIEN is "her attention was caught." I would have rewritten that to "when she saw" and would have tweaked a lot of the other wording in that copy to sharpen it according to the rules another literary agent, Kristen Nelson illustrated with Linnea Sinclair's back cover copy at Denvention III:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/08/denvention-3-walk-con.html
But the TOUCHED BY AN ALIEN cover copy gets the point across about this very interesting woman, Kitty, a MANAGER heading toward the peak of her formidable career, who reacts out of the core of her personality to take charge and exercise her innate sense of responsibility and thereby plunges herself into a whole new reality and a new life.
That "reacts out of the core" and "plunges into" phrasing comes from Blake Snyder's SAVE THE CAT! series which explains why these attitudes are required in a POV character and this construction is an absolute requirement for a feature film screenplay.
I thought about all the kick-ass heroines leading the charge in Paranormal Romance acceptability to the general audiences and especially about the size of the world-audience for AVATAR.
One of the signatures of the Fantasy-SF-kick-ass-heroine novel is that the male and female leads have to be equals, whether they both know it or not. Very often the conflict is about establishing that equality as a prerequisite for a blazing-hot-romance.
If they are not equals, then any sexual relationship smacks of abuse to some (not all) of our modern sensibilities.
Part of our culture has already adopted this icon of equality as the ideal in relationship, and part has rejected it resoundingly. The interesting thing is that sometimes both parts reside in the same reader. The question then becomes, "Are the proportions of these parts that accept or reject equality still changing? If so, in which direction?"
Remember the 1983 film SCARECROW & MRS. KING, and the 2005 film MR.& MRS. SMITH which I discussed:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-does-she-see-in-him.html
Compare the plot of MR.& MRS. SMITH which starts and ends in a marriage counselor's office with the query chosen by Rachelle Gardner.
We're in the midst of a churning harrowing of our cultural values. The pivot point may have been signified by the film WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT, the story of Tina Turner's emergence from abused and neglected child to towering icon of the music scene.
WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT (1993)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108551/
Compare that with the film of same title about modernizing the dating game
WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT (2002)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425645/
Notice the 10 and 20 year intervals and correlate with the generational tastes issues I discussed with respect to Pluto transits:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html
And now, something new is happening.
Look again at the images above - the two with guns drawn, facing one another vs. guns hanging neglected in lax hands and the two embracing one another.
I look at that and I see two images of relationship based on equality of power, authority, efficaciousness, fearlessness, self-respect and mutual respect.
What do you see?
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Sunday, April 11, 2010
SFR Community On Amazon
I happened to be doing something or other public-spirited in nature on my personal Amazon Communities home page (Your Communities) when "Linnea Sinclair" popped up.
I thought that I saw that Linnea Sinclair had just tagged Rebels and Lovers However, now I poke around on the SFR community, I think it must have been Laurie G who did the tagging. It is quite alarming how little privacy one enjoys on Amazon.
Laurie G, Jacqueline Lichtenberg and this author are currently the top ranked "Contributors" in the SFR Community on Amazon. This simply means that we have taken the trouble to add "sfr" as a tag to other authors' books in order to help readers find SFR works if they happen to search by "SFR".
Once a "Community" is created on Amazon, through "tags" anyone can vote on the tags, start a discussion (which one hopes will be relevant), add images and more. At the moment, the SFR community is thinly populated.
If you have a book, or a friend, or a stake in the future of SFR to promote, please take a look.
Find the SFR Community.
http://www.amazon.com/tag/sfr/ref=tag_ybc_ybs_itdp
Rowena Cherry
Friend of ePublishing 2009 Award winner
Please tag Mating Net as SFR for me
http://www.amazon.com/Mating-Net-ebook/dp/B002MQYO98/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=books&qid=1270989513&sr=1-1
I thought that I saw that Linnea Sinclair had just tagged Rebels and Lovers However, now I poke around on the SFR community, I think it must have been Laurie G who did the tagging. It is quite alarming how little privacy one enjoys on Amazon.
Laurie G, Jacqueline Lichtenberg and this author are currently the top ranked "Contributors" in the SFR Community on Amazon. This simply means that we have taken the trouble to add "sfr" as a tag to other authors' books in order to help readers find SFR works if they happen to search by "SFR".
Once a "Community" is created on Amazon, through "tags" anyone can vote on the tags, start a discussion (which one hopes will be relevant), add images and more. At the moment, the SFR community is thinly populated.
If you have a book, or a friend, or a stake in the future of SFR to promote, please take a look.
Find the SFR Community.
http://www.amazon.com/tag/sfr/ref=tag_ybc_ybs_itdp
Rowena Cherry
Friend of ePublishing 2009 Award winner
Please tag Mating Net as SFR for me
http://www.amazon.com/Mating-Net-ebook/dp/B002MQYO98/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=books&qid=1270989513&sr=1-1
Thursday, April 08, 2010
New Fantasy Novel
Amber Quill Press has just published ROGUE MAGESS, the third (and, at present, the chronologically latest planned) novel in a sword-and-sorcery series by my husband, Leslie Roy Carter, and me. Since a lot of back story has accumulated by now, we faced the problem of bringing readers up to speed after a lapse of a couple of years since the release of the last book, BESIEGED ADEPT. At first I thought we should start the novel with a straightforward “the story so far” prologue, as I’ve seen in numerous published series. I wrote one in the voice of the protagonist, sorceress Aetria. My husband didn’t care for the result, so he wrote a conversation between two secondary characters, one of them filling in the other on significant past events before they get ready to serve as escorts and guards for Aetria and her twin sister.
After a critique from our live-in first reader and a discussion among ourselves, we decided that scene was too static; it would probably bore readers who remembered the first two installments and only confuse those who’d forgotten or hadn’t read them. So we reverted to the original plan of sprinkling in bits of back story as snippets of dialogue and brief exposition, as needed to make the present events clear. That technique allowed us to start the story with tension and action—but at the risk of having new readers feel lost.
Now, realistically, because this trilogy is a true series, with each book following directly from the last, few readers are likely to buy it unless they’ve read the first two. In a case like this, is the author justified in proceeding as if she expects readers to be familiar with the previous stories and just need reminding? Should she treat events from earlier volumes like any other kind of back story—supply them on a “need to know” basis?
Or are there times when an old-fashioned, frankly expository “the story so far” introduction works best?
Margaret L. Carter
Carter’s Crypt
Amber Quill Press has just published ROGUE MAGESS, the third (and, at present, the chronologically latest planned) novel in a sword-and-sorcery series by my husband, Leslie Roy Carter, and me. Since a lot of back story has accumulated by now, we faced the problem of bringing readers up to speed after a lapse of a couple of years since the release of the last book, BESIEGED ADEPT. At first I thought we should start the novel with a straightforward “the story so far” prologue, as I’ve seen in numerous published series. I wrote one in the voice of the protagonist, sorceress Aetria. My husband didn’t care for the result, so he wrote a conversation between two secondary characters, one of them filling in the other on significant past events before they get ready to serve as escorts and guards for Aetria and her twin sister.
After a critique from our live-in first reader and a discussion among ourselves, we decided that scene was too static; it would probably bore readers who remembered the first two installments and only confuse those who’d forgotten or hadn’t read them. So we reverted to the original plan of sprinkling in bits of back story as snippets of dialogue and brief exposition, as needed to make the present events clear. That technique allowed us to start the story with tension and action—but at the risk of having new readers feel lost.
Now, realistically, because this trilogy is a true series, with each book following directly from the last, few readers are likely to buy it unless they’ve read the first two. In a case like this, is the author justified in proceeding as if she expects readers to be familiar with the previous stories and just need reminding? Should she treat events from earlier volumes like any other kind of back story—supply them on a “need to know” basis?
Or are there times when an old-fashioned, frankly expository “the story so far” introduction works best?
Margaret L. Carter
Carter’s Crypt
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Pausing For You To Catch Up With Me Part IV
The last 3 Tuesdays, I've left you lists of 9 or 10 posts to read during the week. The first two lists were on Tarot, the Suits of Swords and Pentacles. Last week the list included 9 posts on how writers can use Astrology (without overtly mentioning it!).
All of these lists are about posts that open the topic of how to craft a Magic Realism genre story and make it realistic without the cliche ridden tools of modern Fantasy's version of "magic." PNR writers really need to absorb the import of these posts.
This week you can relax. There's only 6 to this series.
And these 6 posts grow out of two works on the craft of screenwriting by Blake Snyder (May He Rest In Peace). See blakesnyder.com for more on him and by him.
His first two books are titled SAVE THE CAT! and SAVE THE CAT GOES TO THE MOVIES and they took Hollywood by storm.
These two interwoven works show you what a Beat Sheet is, and how to use it to craft a story whether it's a screenplay or a novel. They touch on why you should use a beat sheet, and give you the particular beat sheet Blake discovered by reverse engineering the biggest box-office hits.
When I read his books, I had recently taken a course in Kaballah (one of my all-time favorite topics!) and when I told Blake about the connection I saw, he was enthusiastically accepting of my view.
His discovery of this underlying skeleton behind the biggest hit movies is actually the real secret behind the best selling novels of our genre.
The reason his Beat Sheet works for film, TV, and novels indicates the reason these formats are on a converging path. And that same reason defines "Magic Realism" and why it works as a story genre.
You'd think, considering all my posts on this blog on Web 2.0 and Social networking, I'd say it was technology forcing the media of the fiction delivery system to converge.
But if you've read the posts in my Lists of Posts, you can see how it might be interpreted differently.
It is entirely possible, from the magical view of the universe, that technology exists to facilitate the convergence of these storytelling formats. Film, TV, Webisodes, books, e-books, animated, illustrated. To us readers, it is the story that's important, and the medium is just the vehicle to convey the story to us. We create vehicles suited to conveying the story we want. Do you think?
My 6 part discussion of Blake Snyder's Beat Sheet is posted as part of my professional Review column, ReReadable Books. Each part recommends several novels that illustrate the points made.
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2007/
Compare the dates to the dates on the posts in the Lists of posts from Tuesdays March 16, 23, and 30th on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com
On the left side of the page you can find a link to a list of all my columns archived on simegen.com since 1993.
Most of the later Review column entries are much shorter than my usual entries on this blog. So these 6 review columns taken together are probably no more than 2 blog entries worth of discussion. There's a good chance you've already read most of the books discussed, so you should have no trouble following the points I make.
If not, have fun finding interesting books to read!
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com (current titles)
http://www.simegen.com/jl/ (full index)
All of these lists are about posts that open the topic of how to craft a Magic Realism genre story and make it realistic without the cliche ridden tools of modern Fantasy's version of "magic." PNR writers really need to absorb the import of these posts.
This week you can relax. There's only 6 to this series.
And these 6 posts grow out of two works on the craft of screenwriting by Blake Snyder (May He Rest In Peace). See blakesnyder.com for more on him and by him.
His first two books are titled SAVE THE CAT! and SAVE THE CAT GOES TO THE MOVIES and they took Hollywood by storm.
These two interwoven works show you what a Beat Sheet is, and how to use it to craft a story whether it's a screenplay or a novel. They touch on why you should use a beat sheet, and give you the particular beat sheet Blake discovered by reverse engineering the biggest box-office hits.
When I read his books, I had recently taken a course in Kaballah (one of my all-time favorite topics!) and when I told Blake about the connection I saw, he was enthusiastically accepting of my view.
His discovery of this underlying skeleton behind the biggest hit movies is actually the real secret behind the best selling novels of our genre.
The reason his Beat Sheet works for film, TV, and novels indicates the reason these formats are on a converging path. And that same reason defines "Magic Realism" and why it works as a story genre.
You'd think, considering all my posts on this blog on Web 2.0 and Social networking, I'd say it was technology forcing the media of the fiction delivery system to converge.
But if you've read the posts in my Lists of Posts, you can see how it might be interpreted differently.
It is entirely possible, from the magical view of the universe, that technology exists to facilitate the convergence of these storytelling formats. Film, TV, Webisodes, books, e-books, animated, illustrated. To us readers, it is the story that's important, and the medium is just the vehicle to convey the story to us. We create vehicles suited to conveying the story we want. Do you think?
My 6 part discussion of Blake Snyder's Beat Sheet is posted as part of my professional Review column, ReReadable Books. Each part recommends several novels that illustrate the points made.
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2007/
Compare the dates to the dates on the posts in the Lists of posts from Tuesdays March 16, 23, and 30th on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com
On the left side of the page you can find a link to a list of all my columns archived on simegen.com since 1993.
Most of the later Review column entries are much shorter than my usual entries on this blog. So these 6 review columns taken together are probably no more than 2 blog entries worth of discussion. There's a good chance you've already read most of the books discussed, so you should have no trouble following the points I make.
If not, have fun finding interesting books to read!
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com (current titles)
http://www.simegen.com/jl/ (full index)
Monday, April 05, 2010
SONGS OF LOVE & DEATH: Cover Art
The cover art is in for the much-anticipated anthology edited by the illustrious team of George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. This anthology represents a mixture of SFF and Romance authors, with contributions as follows:"Love Hurts" by Jim Butcher
"The Marrying Maid" by Jo Beverly
"Rooftops" by Carrie Vaughn
"Hurt Me" by M.L.N. Hanover
"Demon Lover" by Cecelia Holland
"The Wayfarer's Advice" by Melinda M. Snodgrass
"Blue Boots" by Robin Hobb
"The Thing About Cassandra" by Neil Gaiman
"After the Blood" by Marjorie M. Liu
"You and You Alone" by Jacqueline Carey
"His Wolf" by Lisa Tuttle
"Courting Trouble" by Linnea Sinclair
"The Demon Dancer" by Mary Jo Putney
"Under/Above the Water" by Tanith Lee
"Kashkia" by Peter S. Beagle
"Man in the Mirror" by Yasmine Galenorn
"A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows" by Diana Gabaldon
Release date is November 16, 2010. The official Simon & Schuster page is here and you can pre-order from Borders here.
I had a terrific time writing for the project, which more than one site has noted as "ground-breaking." Those who know my writing will find "Courting Trouble" very much in the realm of my Finders Keepers in tone and tempo. I've not been able to read other offerings so I can't comment as to their storylines but the list of authors alone is fantastic. I feel blessed (and more than a tad intimidated) to be in such august company!
~Linnea
REBELS AND LOVERS, March 2010: Book 4 in the Dock Five Universe, from Bantam Books and Linnea Sinclair—www.linneasinclair.com
Her mind screamed no. Her body and heart considered what was right and rational, and pushed those all away. She held his gaze for a moment longer than was prudent. “Let me get a beer.”
Sunday, April 04, 2010
Proposition: History Is Fungible
I disagree. History is not, and should not be fungible.
What is "fungible"?
The Biblical Joseph's Egyptians may have brought all their bags of grain to a central storage facility during the years of plenty, and if they later (during the famine years) received bags of grain back, the grain they took out probably wasn't the identical bag they'd deposited up to seven years previously.
Grain is fungible.
Stock options that have the same price and expiration date are fungible, as long as everyone gets what they are entitled to.
During various bankruptcies and bail-outs, we were told that money is fungible. That might depend. If all the money is government money, then maybe so. However, if some of the money in the pot is retirees' personal savings, or flexible spending Health Savings Accounts, or wages/salary/bonuses earned by individuals in previous years and stored in a legal deferred compensation fund, then it's not truly fungible. Not if an element of confiscation is involved.
Corpses of mice might be fungible. I'm reading Martyn Lewis's "Cats In The News" (ISBN 0-356-20282-8) and in the chapter on "Working Cats" there is the tale of Towser a mighty mouser employed by a distillery in Tayside who "produced" 28,899 mice. I don't suppose the managers' delight would be greatly diminished if some of the mice were innocent of feeding on the distillery grain, and had been caught outside.
It would probably be a moot point for the mice, too. If mice are fungible to our managers of grain stores and distilleries, would humans be fungible to aliens? It would depend whether they simply wanted to wipe us out, and put a bounty on our heads, or if they wanted slaves, or breeding specimens for their zoos. In which case, we would not be readily interchangeable for storage and shipment purposes.
Which reminds me of the story about the two polar bears at a zoo in Hokkaido who showed a surprising lack of interest in mating. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/3531006/Japanese-zoo-attempts-to-mate-two-female-polar-bears.html
Apparently, the length of a young polar bear's hair makes it difficult to determine its gender! Those not knowledgeable about such matters might have trouble recognizing an alpha female hyena for what she is. I see considerable potential for politically incorrect situation comedy if aliens had visited ancient Greece in its glory days, and had captured Achilles and Patroclus (for example). Or Sappho and Mica.
Martyn Lewis's book has a very interesting chapter on selective breeding, and the story of the Scottish Fold, and the myths surrounding the origins of the Maine Coon.... and the genetic aberration that produced a single blue tortoiseshell Devon Rex tom.
If an alien human Fancier (equivalent of a Cat Fancier) wanted to create a new breed of humans, a shipload of us certainly would not be fungible. He'd have specific requirements about our physical appearance, coloration, markings, health, age, hardiness, natural resistance to parasites and disease, and our disposition. He probably wouldn't want an aggressive strain.
Our history would probably be fungible to an alien human Fancier.
Just as cars fetch much higher prices at the Barrett-Jackson auctions if they have an interesting provenance, so the glamor of a breed is enhanced if its first exemplar is rumored to have belonged to a tragic royal personage and been smuggled across an ocean (or a galaxy) --perhaps by glamorous berserkers-- and then allowed to run wild upon arrival upon a foreign shore.
According to one blogger (whom I discovered when checking to see who else has proposed that History is Fungible), their own nation's History may be fungible to politicians in need of a good illustration of a point they wish to make. http://blueinthebluegrass.blogspot.com/2010/03/making-history-fungible.html
I deplore the deliberate dissemination of misinformation. Either History is a serious study from which we can learn, or we might as well drop it as an academic subject. That's why I refuse to mess with History by writing fictional accounts of real person's lives (unless the research is scrupulously done and documented, and a suitable disclaimer is included in the novel, which I have seen and applauded.)
Fungible history seems to be in fashion at the moment. I'm not talking about Steampunk which has rules. Recently I listened to a thumping good story on audio book which I will not name since I am sure my next comment would constitute a spoiler. A central plot point was the premise that two (named) consecutive, elderly leaders of a foreign country had not died naturally, but had been cleverly assassinated on the orders of a couple of rogue members of a rival power's secret service.
It was obviously a work of fiction, but I found that offensive.... primarily because the victims were named.
However, when creating a parallel alien world, we could fill our creative blenders with different human dates, battles, leaders, heroes, seminal addresses, treaties, discoveries, inventions, revolutions, disasters and plagues, mix them up and produce an alien history.
Or would the order still matter?
What is "fungible"?
The Biblical Joseph's Egyptians may have brought all their bags of grain to a central storage facility during the years of plenty, and if they later (during the famine years) received bags of grain back, the grain they took out probably wasn't the identical bag they'd deposited up to seven years previously.
Grain is fungible.
Stock options that have the same price and expiration date are fungible, as long as everyone gets what they are entitled to.
During various bankruptcies and bail-outs, we were told that money is fungible. That might depend. If all the money is government money, then maybe so. However, if some of the money in the pot is retirees' personal savings, or flexible spending Health Savings Accounts, or wages/salary/bonuses earned by individuals in previous years and stored in a legal deferred compensation fund, then it's not truly fungible. Not if an element of confiscation is involved.
Corpses of mice might be fungible. I'm reading Martyn Lewis's "Cats In The News" (ISBN 0-356-20282-8) and in the chapter on "Working Cats" there is the tale of Towser a mighty mouser employed by a distillery in Tayside who "produced" 28,899 mice. I don't suppose the managers' delight would be greatly diminished if some of the mice were innocent of feeding on the distillery grain, and had been caught outside.
It would probably be a moot point for the mice, too. If mice are fungible to our managers of grain stores and distilleries, would humans be fungible to aliens? It would depend whether they simply wanted to wipe us out, and put a bounty on our heads, or if they wanted slaves, or breeding specimens for their zoos. In which case, we would not be readily interchangeable for storage and shipment purposes.
Which reminds me of the story about the two polar bears at a zoo in Hokkaido who showed a surprising lack of interest in mating. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/3531006/Japanese-zoo-attempts-to-mate-two-female-polar-bears.html
Apparently, the length of a young polar bear's hair makes it difficult to determine its gender! Those not knowledgeable about such matters might have trouble recognizing an alpha female hyena for what she is. I see considerable potential for politically incorrect situation comedy if aliens had visited ancient Greece in its glory days, and had captured Achilles and Patroclus (for example). Or Sappho and Mica.
Martyn Lewis's book has a very interesting chapter on selective breeding, and the story of the Scottish Fold, and the myths surrounding the origins of the Maine Coon.... and the genetic aberration that produced a single blue tortoiseshell Devon Rex tom.
If an alien human Fancier (equivalent of a Cat Fancier) wanted to create a new breed of humans, a shipload of us certainly would not be fungible. He'd have specific requirements about our physical appearance, coloration, markings, health, age, hardiness, natural resistance to parasites and disease, and our disposition. He probably wouldn't want an aggressive strain.
Our history would probably be fungible to an alien human Fancier.
Just as cars fetch much higher prices at the Barrett-Jackson auctions if they have an interesting provenance, so the glamor of a breed is enhanced if its first exemplar is rumored to have belonged to a tragic royal personage and been smuggled across an ocean (or a galaxy) --perhaps by glamorous berserkers-- and then allowed to run wild upon arrival upon a foreign shore.
According to one blogger (whom I discovered when checking to see who else has proposed that History is Fungible), their own nation's History may be fungible to politicians in need of a good illustration of a point they wish to make. http://blueinthebluegrass.blogspot.com/2010/03/making-history-fungible.html
I deplore the deliberate dissemination of misinformation. Either History is a serious study from which we can learn, or we might as well drop it as an academic subject. That's why I refuse to mess with History by writing fictional accounts of real person's lives (unless the research is scrupulously done and documented, and a suitable disclaimer is included in the novel, which I have seen and applauded.)
Fungible history seems to be in fashion at the moment. I'm not talking about Steampunk which has rules. Recently I listened to a thumping good story on audio book which I will not name since I am sure my next comment would constitute a spoiler. A central plot point was the premise that two (named) consecutive, elderly leaders of a foreign country had not died naturally, but had been cleverly assassinated on the orders of a couple of rogue members of a rival power's secret service.
It was obviously a work of fiction, but I found that offensive.... primarily because the victims were named.
However, when creating a parallel alien world, we could fill our creative blenders with different human dates, battles, leaders, heroes, seminal addresses, treaties, discoveries, inventions, revolutions, disasters and plagues, mix them up and produce an alien history.
Or would the order still matter?
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Mistakes About the Future
Here's Cory Doctorow's column from the latest issue of LOCUS:
Making Smarter Dumb Mistakes
By "smarter dumb mistakes about the future," he's referring to visions of the near future that often turn out to be so ludicrously wrong. As I believe Yogi Berra is supposed to have said, "Prediction is hard, especially about the future." Doctorow's thesis is that the root of these erroneous prognostications tends to spring from an assumption that whatever cool technology we develop will be used to do the same things we're doing now, only in a more efficient way. To hark back to an earlier century, it’s unlikely that anyone alive when the first automobiles took the road envisioned how the car would transform not only the physical but the social landscape of our country. (Its contribution to the “sexual revolution,” for instance, by giving young people a greater capacity to roam free of parental oversight; also the change in the balance of power in courtship—the shift to “dating” as we know it, in which the boy with the money and the transportation has most of the control, as opposed to the custom of the boy calling on the girl at her home with her prior permission, giving her the control, probably wouldn’t have happened without cars.)
Another peculiar misfire I've noticed in SF of the past is a world of cool technology with one item (or a few items) left in a condition that, in retrospect, looks obviously anachronistic. One of the funniest appears in Heinlein's HAVE SPACESUIT WILL TRAVEL, where people who’ve colonized the moon use slide rules. In his much later novel I WILL FEAR NO EVIL, the fabulously rich heroine (a composite of a man’s brain transplanted into a woman’s body) in a high-tech future has to wait several days for the result of her pregnancy test, even though at the time the book was published, the technology to produce nearly instant results already existed (the waiting period for ordinary people arose from delays in getting the lab report to the doctor and from the doctor by phone to the patient). In the Star Trek universe, the transporter of the original series held the implicit potential for replicators and holodecks, but these possibilities were ignored until ST:TNG. Consider the Epsilon caste in BRAVE NEW WORLD, bred to perform menial chores that, in a fully thought-out high-tech future, would mostly be relegated to robots. One of the tasks performed by Epsilons is—are you ready for this—elevator operator!!
Lapses in prediction of social changes are more interesting. For example, many of Heinlein's early novels portray space-traveling humanity living in 1950s-style families, often with mothers in the housewife role. (To be fair, they're "juveniles" published at a time when publishers tended to be stuffier about fiction for young people; in the first edition of Heinlein's RED PLANET, he wasn't allowed to mention that Martians laid eggs.) On a lower intellectual level, THE JETSONS replicated all the silliest cliches of the 1950s middle-class household in a high-tech, fully automated, flying-car, asteroid-hopping universe. As if a mother liberated from housework by a robot maid would spend all her free time shopping. And notice that the father still commutes to work in his flying car; nobody connected with the program thought to predict teleworking.
Again to be fair to Heinlein, his early SF story for adults, “The Roads Must Roll,” is a classic example of taking the technology as a given and showing its social and economic effects.
As C. S. Lewis points out somewhere, the underlying filters through which we view reality are likely to include unquestioned assumptions that we and our opponents on any subject share without realizing their existence, like water to a fish. Hence, in the middle of the twentieth century such disparate works as 1984, BRAVE NEW WORLD, Skinner's WALDEN TWO, and Lewis's own THE ABOLITION OF MAN all share one assumption: That innate "human nature" either doesn't exist or is no match for the influence of environment, that human beings can be molded into any shape their rulers desire. Skinner seems to celebrate the potential of this situation while the other authors deplore it, but neither questions it. As amply demonstrated in Steven Pinker’s THE BLANK SLATE, this belief has been thoroughly disproved even though it stubbornly hangs on as an element of political and social philosophy in some quarters.
What might be our unexamined shared assumptions that would appear absurd, even shocking to visitors from other centuries or other planets? An example from the past: A time traveler from the classical or medieval period would consider our insistence on the primacy of individual rights a bit mad. (At the risk of getting political, just in the past couple of days I’ve encountered that kind of cognitive dissonance online, right here in the First World, from citizens of other English-speaking countries who are baffled by the U.S. health coverage debate. In their world-view, of COURSE universal health care is an obvious necessity on a level with roads and schools.)
Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt
Making Smarter Dumb Mistakes
By "smarter dumb mistakes about the future," he's referring to visions of the near future that often turn out to be so ludicrously wrong. As I believe Yogi Berra is supposed to have said, "Prediction is hard, especially about the future." Doctorow's thesis is that the root of these erroneous prognostications tends to spring from an assumption that whatever cool technology we develop will be used to do the same things we're doing now, only in a more efficient way. To hark back to an earlier century, it’s unlikely that anyone alive when the first automobiles took the road envisioned how the car would transform not only the physical but the social landscape of our country. (Its contribution to the “sexual revolution,” for instance, by giving young people a greater capacity to roam free of parental oversight; also the change in the balance of power in courtship—the shift to “dating” as we know it, in which the boy with the money and the transportation has most of the control, as opposed to the custom of the boy calling on the girl at her home with her prior permission, giving her the control, probably wouldn’t have happened without cars.)
Another peculiar misfire I've noticed in SF of the past is a world of cool technology with one item (or a few items) left in a condition that, in retrospect, looks obviously anachronistic. One of the funniest appears in Heinlein's HAVE SPACESUIT WILL TRAVEL, where people who’ve colonized the moon use slide rules. In his much later novel I WILL FEAR NO EVIL, the fabulously rich heroine (a composite of a man’s brain transplanted into a woman’s body) in a high-tech future has to wait several days for the result of her pregnancy test, even though at the time the book was published, the technology to produce nearly instant results already existed (the waiting period for ordinary people arose from delays in getting the lab report to the doctor and from the doctor by phone to the patient). In the Star Trek universe, the transporter of the original series held the implicit potential for replicators and holodecks, but these possibilities were ignored until ST:TNG. Consider the Epsilon caste in BRAVE NEW WORLD, bred to perform menial chores that, in a fully thought-out high-tech future, would mostly be relegated to robots. One of the tasks performed by Epsilons is—are you ready for this—elevator operator!!
Lapses in prediction of social changes are more interesting. For example, many of Heinlein's early novels portray space-traveling humanity living in 1950s-style families, often with mothers in the housewife role. (To be fair, they're "juveniles" published at a time when publishers tended to be stuffier about fiction for young people; in the first edition of Heinlein's RED PLANET, he wasn't allowed to mention that Martians laid eggs.) On a lower intellectual level, THE JETSONS replicated all the silliest cliches of the 1950s middle-class household in a high-tech, fully automated, flying-car, asteroid-hopping universe. As if a mother liberated from housework by a robot maid would spend all her free time shopping. And notice that the father still commutes to work in his flying car; nobody connected with the program thought to predict teleworking.
Again to be fair to Heinlein, his early SF story for adults, “The Roads Must Roll,” is a classic example of taking the technology as a given and showing its social and economic effects.
As C. S. Lewis points out somewhere, the underlying filters through which we view reality are likely to include unquestioned assumptions that we and our opponents on any subject share without realizing their existence, like water to a fish. Hence, in the middle of the twentieth century such disparate works as 1984, BRAVE NEW WORLD, Skinner's WALDEN TWO, and Lewis's own THE ABOLITION OF MAN all share one assumption: That innate "human nature" either doesn't exist or is no match for the influence of environment, that human beings can be molded into any shape their rulers desire. Skinner seems to celebrate the potential of this situation while the other authors deplore it, but neither questions it. As amply demonstrated in Steven Pinker’s THE BLANK SLATE, this belief has been thoroughly disproved even though it stubbornly hangs on as an element of political and social philosophy in some quarters.
What might be our unexamined shared assumptions that would appear absurd, even shocking to visitors from other centuries or other planets? An example from the past: A time traveler from the classical or medieval period would consider our insistence on the primacy of individual rights a bit mad. (At the risk of getting political, just in the past couple of days I’ve encountered that kind of cognitive dissonance online, right here in the First World, from citizens of other English-speaking countries who are baffled by the U.S. health coverage debate. In their world-view, of COURSE universal health care is an obvious necessity on a level with roads and schools.)
Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Pausing For You To Catch Up With Me Part III
Parts I and II of this series of pauses are found on this blog for the Tuesdays March 16 and March 23. They list the 10 posts on the Tarot Suit of Swords, the Tarot Suit of Pentacles, and a few reviews looking at trends in the SFR and PNR fields of Romance.
This list of posts is in response to the question of what is Magic Realism (a sub-genre of Fantasy) and how do you write Magic Realism which appeared on Twitter in February 2010 during the #scifichat.
The first part of my answer is that you study the worldview through the eyes of the real-world history of the Magical View Of The Universe. This is in contrast to the view of the Magical View Of The Universe you can see through the eyes of The Scientific View Of The Universe. It's all about Shifting Point Of View, an exercise writers do everyday, three times a day at least.
I believe that the Magical View Of The Universe is most easily accessed by the science-trained writer of today via the study of Tarot and Astrology.
This study is not about discarding the scientific view of the universe (do that and you lose your readers) but rather about incorporating the scientific view of reality into the (older and larger) magical view of reality.
The two views are not incompatible but complimentary. The scientific view drives Science Fiction and the magical view drives Fantasy genres. But in the current marketplace, the two views are starting to blend into one, producing some remarkable fiction, SFR being one example.
So over the last few years, I've done a series of posts here giving an overview of Astrology, singling out the least technical premises that can be of use to writers building a world for characters and readers to romp around in.
This series is called Astrology Just For Writers. It can also be used to start learning enough of the magical view of the universe, and how it differs from and incorporates the scientific view of the universe, to create a Magic Realism story.
Here is a list of the URLS for the Astrology Just For Writers series.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/07/astrology-just-for-writers.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/07/astrology-just-for-writers-part-2.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/10/astrology-just-for-writers-part-3-genre.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/12/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-4-high.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/12/astrology-just-for-writers-part-5-high.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/11/astrology-just-for-writers-part-6.html (This is actually Part 7)
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/12/astrology-just-for-writers-part-8-beat.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/01/astrology-just-for-writers-part-9-high.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/08/astrology-just-for-writers-part-10.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/11/astrology-just-for-writers-part-11.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/02/astrology-just-for-writers-part-12.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/02/astrology-just-for-writers-part-13.html
That is obviously not all I need to say on the subject of using Astrology as a worldbuilding tool. With time, I hope to cover the whole subject and show how it can be used to increase the regard the ordinary reader has for the field of Romance, particularly SFR and PNR.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/06/astrology-just-for-writers-part-14.html Science Catches Up.
To do a large job, you need large tools - and Astrology is the John Deere of Soul Moving Equipment manufacturers.
How To Use Tarot And Astrology In Science Fiction Series:
Part 1 Real History
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/12/how-to-use-tarot-and-astrology-in.html
Part 2 Now Speculate
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/12/how-to-use-tarot-astrology-in-science.html
Part 3 Suspend Reader Disbelief
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/01/how-to-use-tarot-and-astrology-in.html
Part 4 Explore Solutions New To The Reader
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/01/how-to-use-tarot-and-astrology-in_22.html
Part 5 - The Story of a Life
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/04/how-to-use-tarot-and-astrology-in.html
Part 6 - Confronting Change
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/03/how-to-use-tarot-and-astrology-in.html
Part 7 - Creating Charisma with Verisimilitude
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/04/how-to-use-tarot-and-astrology-in.html
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
This list of posts is in response to the question of what is Magic Realism (a sub-genre of Fantasy) and how do you write Magic Realism which appeared on Twitter in February 2010 during the #scifichat.
The first part of my answer is that you study the worldview through the eyes of the real-world history of the Magical View Of The Universe. This is in contrast to the view of the Magical View Of The Universe you can see through the eyes of The Scientific View Of The Universe. It's all about Shifting Point Of View, an exercise writers do everyday, three times a day at least.
I believe that the Magical View Of The Universe is most easily accessed by the science-trained writer of today via the study of Tarot and Astrology.
This study is not about discarding the scientific view of the universe (do that and you lose your readers) but rather about incorporating the scientific view of reality into the (older and larger) magical view of reality.
The two views are not incompatible but complimentary. The scientific view drives Science Fiction and the magical view drives Fantasy genres. But in the current marketplace, the two views are starting to blend into one, producing some remarkable fiction, SFR being one example.
So over the last few years, I've done a series of posts here giving an overview of Astrology, singling out the least technical premises that can be of use to writers building a world for characters and readers to romp around in.
This series is called Astrology Just For Writers. It can also be used to start learning enough of the magical view of the universe, and how it differs from and incorporates the scientific view of the universe, to create a Magic Realism story.
Here is a list of the URLS for the Astrology Just For Writers series.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/07/astrology-just-for-writers.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/07/astrology-just-for-writers-part-2.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/10/astrology-just-for-writers-part-3-genre.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/12/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-4-high.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/12/astrology-just-for-writers-part-5-high.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/11/astrology-just-for-writers-part-6.html (This is actually Part 7)
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/12/astrology-just-for-writers-part-8-beat.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/01/astrology-just-for-writers-part-9-high.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/08/astrology-just-for-writers-part-10.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/11/astrology-just-for-writers-part-11.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/02/astrology-just-for-writers-part-12.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/02/astrology-just-for-writers-part-13.html
That is obviously not all I need to say on the subject of using Astrology as a worldbuilding tool. With time, I hope to cover the whole subject and show how it can be used to increase the regard the ordinary reader has for the field of Romance, particularly SFR and PNR.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/06/astrology-just-for-writers-part-14.html Science Catches Up.
To do a large job, you need large tools - and Astrology is the John Deere of Soul Moving Equipment manufacturers.
How To Use Tarot And Astrology In Science Fiction Series:
Part 1 Real History
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/12/how-to-use-tarot-and-astrology-in.html
Part 2 Now Speculate
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/12/how-to-use-tarot-astrology-in-science.html
Part 3 Suspend Reader Disbelief
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/01/how-to-use-tarot-and-astrology-in.html
Part 4 Explore Solutions New To The Reader
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/01/how-to-use-tarot-and-astrology-in_22.html
Part 5 - The Story of a Life
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/04/how-to-use-tarot-and-astrology-in.html
Part 6 - Confronting Change
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/03/how-to-use-tarot-and-astrology-in.html
Part 7 - Creating Charisma with Verisimilitude
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/04/how-to-use-tarot-and-astrology-in.html
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Whither Fiction?
In Jack Vance's "The Book Of Dreams", the hero was a newspaperman. Newspapers were still printed and distributed. I inferred that would-be readers paid for them.
Is this a sustainable business model? While staying at a Wyndhams motel, I noticed that I could receive .75c credit on my stay if I opted to decline a morning copy of "USA Today". That was a shock. I've always accepted that my "complimentary" morning newspaper is part of the package.
I don't subscribe to a newspaper. My mother does. I don't. Initially, I did not appreciate the oxymoron of paying for the "Free Press" and I wasn't offered "The Telegraph" or "The FT". Now, I'm accustomed to getting my news from AOL and Google.
Ultimately, I suppose that I pay Comcast for it, since I pay Comcast for my internet connection... just as I paid the Wyndham motel for "USA Today".
For the record, I'd prefer it if Comcast would charge me less for my internet access, and allow me to break out whatever I don't want. I'd rather pay for that to which I subscribe. I don't approve of the "entitlement mentality". I think it's a bad precedent. Mr Murdoch is trying to put the news genie back in the bottle, but it's always harder to monetize something once people are accustomed to getting it for free.
Same with music. Same with movies. Same with fiction.
For that reason, I don't approve of Amazon, and I don't approve of Baen. One needs clarity, and they've muddied the waters. Copyright was pretty straightforward. An author has the right to control the reproduction, distribution and performance of her work. Copyright means that a reader cannot create a new copy of a book (or several copies) in any form (photocopy, CD, email etc), nor may he re-sell or share the copies.
There are two paranormal romance authors whose e-books are continually available on EBay auctions. I assume that those two authors don't mind if their novels are (rightly or wrongly) believed to be in the public domain by thousands of EBayers. Other vampire-and-paranormal authors who need the income from legal sales of their ebooks, and whose books are included in auctions of "191 Vampire and Fantasy Books" are hurt by the lack of clarity.
An apparently overwhelming number of internet users seem to believe that all fiction ought to be free. If they own a computer, and they have an internet connection, everything on the internet ought to be available to them at no further charge. The Net Neutrality advocates seem to believe that someone who spends his entire day and half the night up- and down-loading "free" movies and romance novels ought to pay the same for his internet usage as someone who checks his emails twice a week.
"If we like it, we'll donate what we think it's worth" seems to be the attitude towards creators. So, will we authors return to a Shakespearean business model? Will we rely on holding out the collection cap in cyberspace?
I think not. Allegedly, EBay cannot find copyright owners to notify them of an infringement report, even when the author's name is on the cover of the infringed novel. Allegedly, Google cannot find the authors of "orphan works", especially if they live overseas. So, how likely is it that someone who clicks a link on Astatalk and reads "Forced Mate" and very much enjoys my creative writing is going to find me, locate some means of paying me, and send me money?
It has never happened. It is not going to happen.
So, how else did The Queen's Men earn their living? By pleasing a rich and powerful patron. That's how. It won't be good for creativity, accuracy, journalistic integrity. Nor will it be good for the reader. But, as they say, "You gets what you pays for."
I wonder what kind of powerful crackpot would sponsor alien romance authors? The future would probably offer slim pickings for those who would make heroes of vampires and werewolves, too. Bodysnatcher romance might be okay.... but I won't go there.
Seriously, the world changes really quickly. I was listening to a 2010-set Tom Clancy novel. NetForce. Tom assumed that Britain would have a King by now. Some things don't change that quickly! If we write speculative fiction, it's likely that future heroes and villains will still want sex, power, and wealth not necessarily in that order. What else they do for fun and profit might not involve ink and paper. It's more likely to involve multiple choice and pixels.
The other possibility I foresee is a return to the oral tradition of troubadours and travelling storytellers. The only way not to be ripped off and to get people to pay for our creativity would be if we could be more like the evangelists... Joel Osteen?... Fill a ball park with people who'd come to hear us tell a story.
Is this a sustainable business model? While staying at a Wyndhams motel, I noticed that I could receive .75c credit on my stay if I opted to decline a morning copy of "USA Today". That was a shock. I've always accepted that my "complimentary" morning newspaper is part of the package.
I don't subscribe to a newspaper. My mother does. I don't. Initially, I did not appreciate the oxymoron of paying for the "Free Press" and I wasn't offered "The Telegraph" or "The FT". Now, I'm accustomed to getting my news from AOL and Google.
Ultimately, I suppose that I pay Comcast for it, since I pay Comcast for my internet connection... just as I paid the Wyndham motel for "USA Today".
For the record, I'd prefer it if Comcast would charge me less for my internet access, and allow me to break out whatever I don't want. I'd rather pay for that to which I subscribe. I don't approve of the "entitlement mentality". I think it's a bad precedent. Mr Murdoch is trying to put the news genie back in the bottle, but it's always harder to monetize something once people are accustomed to getting it for free.
Same with music. Same with movies. Same with fiction.
For that reason, I don't approve of Amazon, and I don't approve of Baen. One needs clarity, and they've muddied the waters. Copyright was pretty straightforward. An author has the right to control the reproduction, distribution and performance of her work. Copyright means that a reader cannot create a new copy of a book (or several copies) in any form (photocopy, CD, email etc), nor may he re-sell or share the copies.
There are two paranormal romance authors whose e-books are continually available on EBay auctions. I assume that those two authors don't mind if their novels are (rightly or wrongly) believed to be in the public domain by thousands of EBayers. Other vampire-and-paranormal authors who need the income from legal sales of their ebooks, and whose books are included in auctions of "191 Vampire and Fantasy Books" are hurt by the lack of clarity.
An apparently overwhelming number of internet users seem to believe that all fiction ought to be free. If they own a computer, and they have an internet connection, everything on the internet ought to be available to them at no further charge. The Net Neutrality advocates seem to believe that someone who spends his entire day and half the night up- and down-loading "free" movies and romance novels ought to pay the same for his internet usage as someone who checks his emails twice a week.
"If we like it, we'll donate what we think it's worth" seems to be the attitude towards creators. So, will we authors return to a Shakespearean business model? Will we rely on holding out the collection cap in cyberspace?
I think not. Allegedly, EBay cannot find copyright owners to notify them of an infringement report, even when the author's name is on the cover of the infringed novel. Allegedly, Google cannot find the authors of "orphan works", especially if they live overseas. So, how likely is it that someone who clicks a link on Astatalk and reads "Forced Mate" and very much enjoys my creative writing is going to find me, locate some means of paying me, and send me money?
It has never happened. It is not going to happen.
By the way, MediaFire has introduced the functionality allowing thieves and all their friends to "share" files to Twitter, Facebook, Stumble Upon, Digg It, and MySpace... and also to embed illegal links.
In my opinion, just because MediaFire posts small print saying that their registered users agree that they are responsible for the content they post does not absolve MediaFire from responsibility. Their "agreement" is with their users, not with their victims. It is MediaFire that makes it possible for an URL to be shared with millions. Like this http://www.mediafire.com/?mjwvmfjwjyd
So, how else did The Queen's Men earn their living? By pleasing a rich and powerful patron. That's how. It won't be good for creativity, accuracy, journalistic integrity. Nor will it be good for the reader. But, as they say, "You gets what you pays for."
I wonder what kind of powerful crackpot would sponsor alien romance authors? The future would probably offer slim pickings for those who would make heroes of vampires and werewolves, too. Bodysnatcher romance might be okay.... but I won't go there.
Seriously, the world changes really quickly. I was listening to a 2010-set Tom Clancy novel. NetForce. Tom assumed that Britain would have a King by now. Some things don't change that quickly! If we write speculative fiction, it's likely that future heroes and villains will still want sex, power, and wealth not necessarily in that order. What else they do for fun and profit might not involve ink and paper. It's more likely to involve multiple choice and pixels.
The other possibility I foresee is a return to the oral tradition of troubadours and travelling storytellers. The only way not to be ripped off and to get people to pay for our creativity would be if we could be more like the evangelists... Joel Osteen?... Fill a ball park with people who'd come to hear us tell a story.
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