Thursday, July 11, 2013

Writing and Distractions

While searching for the online page of this month’s LOCUS column by Cory Doctorow, I came across this older column:

Writing in the Age of Distraction

Its short length is packed with useful tips for avoiding distractions while at work on a writing project. I’m already ahead on the admonition not to keep instant messaging, etc., active while writing. I never use IM or anything like it. I especially like Doctorow’s advice to write for 20 minutes every day. He equates that time to a page and points out that a page a day equals a novel in a year (or less, I may add). Writing every day keeps the momentum going. He also suggests leaving a “rough edge” to pick up when you start the next session. Stop in the middle of a scene or even the middle of a sentence. I’ve found this practice does help to maintain the writing flow, although it took me a while to overcome my compulsive neatnik urge to tidy things up by closing my session with the end of a scene or chapter every time. (However, I must admit that 20 minutes don’t usually equal a page for me. I assume he means single-spaced pages?)

Now, if only I could claim to write every day. I embarked on “retirement” with that intention. Maybe I should take on Doctorow’s discipline of the daily 20-minute session when I can’t fit in the thousand word goal I originally set for myself. This past week, for instance: On Friday my computer freaked out; nothing appeared on the monitor. The hope that the problem came from a defective cable or even something as simple as a video card proved illusory. When our son who serves as the resident computer tech managed to get some sort of display to appear on the monitor, it became clear that the machine had suffered a nervous breakdown. So we mounted an expedition to Best Buy to acquire a new computer before dinner. The next day, we drove on a 5-hour round trip (not counting the lunch stop) to pick up a 2-month-old St. Bernard. The day after, Sunday, was filled by church in the morning and catching up on all the routine stuff I hadn’t been able to do on Saturday, plus constantly supervising the puppy. Monday we took the puppy to the vet. Tuesday I had a dental appointment. Yesterday I had to do an interview over the phone. Plus, each day, constantly supervising the puppy.

The other day we were fantasizing about buying a second house (a very small one, of course) just to hold our books, like Forrest Ackerman. I suggested we could also use this hypothetical house for a writing office, where no mundane distractions could provide excuses not to write. Of course, the space would still be full of books . . . .

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Tuesday, July 09, 2013

Worldbuilding From Reality Part 3: Creating Future History

Worldbuilding From Reality Part 3: Creating Future History by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

But first I have to point you at the new story-driven, cross platform, science fiction RPG Ambrov X -- there's a constant stream of news about it on the Facebook Page,
https://www.facebook.com/ambrovx

and a free Newsletter signup at:

http://www.ambrovx.com

About Ambrov X

A story-driven, cross-platform Science Fiction RPG set in the award-winning universe of Sime~Gen®! Join us on Kickstarter on Sept. 3, 2013! ambrovx.com
Description
Set in the award winning Sime~Gen® Universe by Jacqueline Lichtenberg and Jean Lorrah, Ambrov X casts players in a far distant future as leaders of an unlikely but elite crew tasked with planting space beacons which allow for faster than light space travel. The Ambrov X saga unfolds into an action-packed story of first contact. Complete with epic battles and emotional decision making, Ambrov X brings to life the single-player, story-driven RPG through a thrilling space opera adventure. Releasing cross-platform for PC, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android.


-----------Worldbuilding From Reality Part 3------------

Previous Parts in this series and a Link List for Worldbuilding posts:


http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/02/worldbuilding-from-reality-part-2.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/worldbuilding-from-reality.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/06/worldbuilding-link-list.html




Have you ever explored biorhythms?  They graph like this image above from
http://www.whitestranger.com/free_biorhythm_chart.php 

Note that an astrology chart or a biorhythm chart has no beginning and no end. 

Astrology takes BIRTH as the beginning of a sequential process that is endless, but there's conception before that -- and the parent's origins -- and after you, your descendants and the echos of your actions in life.

WORLDS ARE ENDLESS. 

We just arbitrarily stipulate "the beginning" of "the story" and the "end of the story."

We cut a "novel" or a "story" out of an endless sequence of interwoven events -- like the waves of the ocean, without beginning and without end.

So when you set out to write a novel, that "beginning-less and endless" vista has to be part of your worldbuilding -- the building of the world your specific character must navigate.

It isn't enough for a writer to create a world with a history of it's own.  That world, in which your characters work and live, has to have a future, too.

A story or a novel is a POINT -- two points and you can draw a line, but a line isn't a direction or trajectory.  Three points - maybe a triangle.  Lots of points (my Sime~Gen universe has 12 large points, novels, and several small short-story points with a videogame extending it into it's "future history) create a curve.

To get the sine-wave of History, you need points extending over years and years.  Whether you write those endless years into your novel or not, they need to be in your head somewhere (not necessarily consciously). 

To know your character, you have to know where he/she came from -- but to know that character's story, you have to know where that world is going and what that character has to do with that destination.

Look again at that pattern of interwoven sine-waves.  There is a way to graph the planetary movements that is used in astrology to understand influences in play for a particular life over a particular stretch of years.  It looks exactly like that biorhythm chart.

It doesn't matter whether you (personally) "believe in" astrology, Tarot, Romance, biorhythms, or whatever else.  To become the best writer you can be, you must be able to look at data-sets from all kinds of points of view, from within every sort of belief system, so the characters who disagree with each other, who argue and conflict to generate story, who oppose each other, can SPEAK to each other in ways that will ring true to readers who live within one or another belief set.

You don't have to believe it, but you do have to understand what the world looks and feels like when you do believe it.  You need to walk some miles in the moccasins of various belief systems.

My blog posts here are all about how the writer's mind works, inside itself, and how to train your mind to work like whichever sort of writer you want to be.  More than that, whatever sort of writer you are now -- to be "professional" at writing, you must be able to produce ALL the other sorts of writing.

Professionals (i.e. those who make a living in a field) spend most of their time mastering their tools.

You can tell a professional in any field by that versatility of mind, the ability to improvise with whatever tools are at hand, and the ability to know which tools can do which jobs most efficiently.

The difference between "amateur" and "professional" is basically attitude, but the result that others see to judge professionalism is "efficiency." 

So the writer's career is spent LEARNING -- constantly and forever learning, every day something new, and every day another stage of mastery of a tool of the trade.

Today's exercise is in PERSPECTIVE.  Today we look at the world readers live in, and attempt to replicate it's shape in a fictional piece of worldbuilding.

OK, one thing readers live with but never notice is that "no beginning, and no end" effect of biorhythms. 

To cope with that scope of the world around them, (being human/ -- non-humans might do this differently) humans IGNORE what came before, and mostly don't think about "the future."

People used to think about "the future" more than they do today.  Our temporal horizon in this culture has shifted to a more "now" focused view.  Writers must, however, worldbuild with the unseen past and unforeseeable future in mind.

How do you go about doing that? 

Energy.  Kinetic energy and potential energy. 

You analyze what is now in terms of those interacting sine-waves in that image to find the amount of available energy -- the potential being stored, the potential stored from distant history, what has been released and is moving now, where that motion will lead.

That's very abstract.  How do you apply such an abstraction to the task of worldbuilding for a novel?

Watch the daily news -- and watch some TV series fiction.  Watch some specials.  Read some biographies.  Maybe watch some really old movies on Amazon or Netflix.

Let's look at a set of data from an exercise of that type and see how to apply this "no beginning/no end" model.

Focus on SOCIETY.  Personally, I regard "society" something that doesn't exist.  It's rare to find two people who mean the same thing by the word. 

But let's look at FOUR "periods" in social-history.

A) 1940's-1950's
B) 1960's-1970's
C) 1980's-2000


Take for example the 1940's, just after Rosy The Riveter won World War II for the USA.

Yeah, women moving into men's jobs (jobs "society" reserved only for men) freed up most of the able bodied workforce to go fight a war. 

After 1946, the repercussions of that never stopped.  The men came home but the women didn't want to go home. 

The women were forced to "go home" as the baby-boom exploded.  With the technology available at that time, there was no other way to have and raise kids than to have a family structured with a breadwinner and a homebody to raise the kids.

In the 1940's, there were still many homes with no telephone, or if they had a phone it was a party-line where the neighbors could hear what was said from your house.  People generally had electric lights, indoor flush toilets, many had a car but they didn't work very well, and there were no interstate highways (there was the U.S. Highway system, not very good).  Everyone had a radio, and radio drama and news wove the country into a single culture. 

They had refrigerators, but usually only a tiny compartment of a freezer that had to be defrosted weekly.  Women cooked and did laundry and cleaned (even in an apartment that was 30 hours a week at least) and shopped every day.  Clothes had to be hand washed on a washboard, hauled outside and hung to dry, then IRONED (another 10 hours a week for a family of 3 or 4).  Shopping was usually done at a local market, DAILY, bags hand-carried home or rolled in a "shopping cart."  Milk was delivered in glass bottles which were collected for refilling not recycling. 

There was no such thing as a diaper service for cloth diapers and no disposable diapers.  Diapers (cloth) were washed by hand and then boiled.  Baby formula was only beginning to exist, and many made baby food though Gerbers existed.  Babies were nursed for years (as is coming back into fashion today).  While nursing or pregnant, women had to do all that hand-housework so "exercise" and "gym" didn't exist as an activity.  Everyone was too tired.  In fact women were cranky and tired when their husbands demanded attention. 

So the returned soldiers set out on a concerted effort to create "labor saving devices" and "convenience" became a marketable commodity. 

The returned soldiers were eligible for school grants and housing loans.  Housing was built fast (you've seen some of those 1950's houses, maybe live in one).  They had good jobs and worked specifically to buy a house for their wives to raise all those kids in. 

In the 1950's working-class homes began to have television sets and clothes washers (no microwaves, but power-appliances for kitchens), and freezers to store lots of food, and the TV dinner, and other frozen convenience foods.  And cars. Everyone had a car or was saving to get one.  Houses and cars were suddenly "within reach" and that generated the suburbs and the commuter.  

1960's-1970's

This was the do-it-yourself generation, the home-handyman/woman, the rise of "kits" and every manner of repair or build-from-scratch project.  People didn't pay others to do things.  They did it themselves -- gardening to roof repair.  They did it themselves to SAVE MONEY, and the saved money was indeed saved (in a bank). 

This next period saw the wild post-war success of Rosie The Riveter at home raising kids as an opportunity, a hope, a rising joy with no end.  (remember that no beginning, no end)

Women could now spend less vital energy just keeping house and raising kids. Clothes washers and permanent press clothes, the freezer and frozen dinners, VACUUM CLEANERS!!!, and a myriad labor saving devices and products gave women spare time they'd never had before.  Ever.  In all history and before that. 

Girls could aspire to college and majors other than teaching or librarian.  Secretaries didn't need college, and neither did waitresses. (today waitresses need a college degree in business because they're really just working their way up to owning the franchise!).

And this was the era of Star Trek (late 1960's TV Series) where people focused on the future, and the sky was no limit.  Here is the origin of the computer, the internet, the world wide web (two different structures), and today the smartphone/tablet/phablet and beyond. 

So women awoke, and demanded equal pay for equal work.

Previously, women who worked were secretaries or teachers and that was considered a temporary phase in a life destined to bearing and raising 12 kids.

Birth control options changed that, big time, but let's focus here on the part of the society-dynamic introduced by the notion of WOMEN WORKING PROFESSIONALLY (potential energy -- remember, go look at those sine-waves again and think ENERGY).

Here's the argument from the 1960's, which originated in the 1940's.  Prior to the 1940's this argument wasn't in play because women had no options. 

Employers MUST pay women LESS for their hours of work because MEN MUST SUPPORT A FAMILY, and any money an employer pays a woman is money taken away from a man.

Women were not "bread-winners" and not responsible for SUPPORTING DEPENDENTS.  Being female meant being dependent -- no option.

And that is the reality of things in 3rd world countries today -- and in anti-women societies which may not be all that primitive technologically, but adhere to a philosophy which places steel-walls around the entire class "female." 

Male = PROVIDER
Female = DEPENDENT

That's a social paradigm that has existed since "female" was invented. 

The argument that we can still play with in futuristic romance is still a hot one. 

Now with "labor saving devices" (so far no artificial womb such as Bujold postulates in her VORKOSIGAN SAGA series) and contraception, women can choose.

That choice threw "society" into a tizzy because the stable situation of all choices made for you before birth ws suddenly upset, but in a lopsided way.  Women could choose but men couldn't.

1980-2000

In the 80's and through the 1990's men began to grab their right of choice back.

Marriage as an institution is in flux, being redesigned.  Romance isn't any less common, soul-mating and life-bonding is not less common.  But "Marriage" took a body-blow with the anti-marriage tax penalty structure in the USA (where a married couple that both brought home man-sized salaries paid more in tax than two people living together but not married).

We get the rise of the "house-husband" -- and during the economic bubble-burstings of the 2000-2020 decades we're seeing the whole FAMILY PARADIGM SHIFT.

Not just marriage is being redefined -- FAMILY is being redefined drastically.

The gay-marriage argument is very complex.  There are a few among the advocates of gay marriage as a legal institution who opening admit that their ultimate goal is the destruction of marriage as a way of life. (really, there's a whole coherent philosophically driven group dedicated to that).  But the majority just want government to leave people alone to do what they want. 

Statistics show that children raised by a man and woman who are married (usually to each other; not always these days) fare better in school and in life than children raised by a single parent.  This holds true even if both husband and wife work.

Which brings us back to the EQUAL PAY issue.

Today compared to the 1940's (remember we're focused on no beginning/ no end), a husband and wife who BOTH WORK bring home about what a HUSBAND of the 1950's was bringing home in terms of purchasing power.

To have a medium-nice house in the suburbs, car, clothes, food, college for say 3 kids, both husband and wife have to work.  That same lifestyle in the 1950's was financed by one man working -- and didn't have to be a college graduate professional to pull in that much purchasing power.

So (a writer can have a character argue) it turns out that the MEN arguing against EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK in the 1950's were in fact CORRECT (if not "right"), that men were pulling larger salaries BECAUSE they had dependents to support.  Putting the dependents into the work force could be seen as causing that single salary to be divided between two workers.

Again, go back and stare at those sine-waves.

Think potential energy transforming into kinetic energy, and back again, no beginning, no end.

The world your readers live in came FROM --

One bread-winner supporting one dependent plus kids (sometimes 10 or 12 kids, but the older boys start work at age 10 and the girls work at cooking, sewing, cleaning, growing vegetables, canning etc.)

TO--
Two bread-winners supporting 2 or 3 kids, sometimes 0 these days as the USA birthrate is under 2.0 for the first time on record.

Remember, in worldbuilding -- no beginning and no END. 

So you have to project the world your reader is living in ahead into your reader's future (as your reader might see it).

Think potential energy again, and think of that constantly undulating sine-wave.

We had the paradigm:

Male = PROVIDER
Female = DEPENDENT

But we broke it with technology freeing women -- and the men created that technology of labor saving devices to free up their wives so they could have attention (you know what kind; you're a romance writer so use your imagination).

What got broken?  Only one of the two things got broken -- the relationship between gender and role in providing.  The paradigm part that did not break is PROVIDER VS DEPENDENT.

Today we have the house-husband displaced from professional arc by these nasty recessions staying home (maybe working from home, selling on eBay or whatever), and the woman climbing a corporate ladder.

That's not a common arrangement, but it is losing stigma.  2020 to 2040 will see a change.

OK, what might that change be?

Look at the economy, then look at 1950's Science Fiction. 

What we see happening is just exactly what was postulated by 1950's science fiction -- a problem was described back then and never solved.  Without that vision of a solution, we (as a society) are muddling through to something that might be a solution.

Your readers don't want to look at that future, but they are aware of it, and you can use that awareness to craft your "endless world" illusion.

In the 1950's, writers were pointing out the effects of the burgeoning technological revolution.

By 1960, that revolution was roaring out of the laboratories into manufacturing.

The trend the SF writers of that day saw was the demise of the "idiot stick" job.

An "idiot stick" is a broom.  Many jobs of that post-war period, and very often the job the 12 year old boy would get as his first job -- especially as far back as the 1920's -- was pushing an "idiot stick" or the classic paper route on his bicycle.

In other words, every boy started his working life with UNSKILLED LABOR, and a certain percentage never gained any skills beyond that level.  By 1960, jack-hammer operator was added to unskilled labor. 

All those jobs are gone now.  Only a few years ago, "voice mail" replaced "telephone operator" (the girl's unskilled labor job) and "message taker" in hotels were GONE.  Now a machine does that.  Soon robots will clean rooms and make beds in hotels.  Farmers are already investing heavily in picking equipment to replace the migrant labor they can't get across borders.

Child labor laws and automation have eliminated starter-jobs.  Look at amazon's warehouse operation -- mostly automated.  One classic unskilled job is stocking grocery shelves and produce departments.  Amazon and other online sources are beginning to handle groceries.  Amazon is building warehouses all over so they can deliver "same day" -- where does that go?  Produce and perishables will be added to amazon's warehouse, eliminating grocery stock clerk jobs.  Google is working on a car that drives itself -- truck driver will be an unskilled job (even school bus driver) that is eliminated.

Now look at the jobs that are left standing.

They all require considerable training and intelligence enough to absorb that training (not to mention showing up for work without drugs in your system).  Look at new categories of jobs being created.

America's employers are screaming for Engineers of every stripe! 

Other jobs of that kind that are being invented all require an IQ above 100 to learn and to do.

That's what the 1950's SF writers pointed out -- automation and computers would inevitably lead to a world where to get a job you had to have an IQ way above 100.

100 is "average" for a reason -- half the people in the world have an IQ less than 100.  They can't learn or do these jobs -- not won't, CAN'T.

The other counter-trend to take account of in worldbuilding is that we are now using computer chips to alter "jobs" -- to dumb-down procedures so that average people can do them.  Look at smartphones -- you don't have to be a genius to use an app, but running a full Microsoft desktop computer used to take engineer-level tech skills and the ability to acquire new skills very fast.  Now everything is "in the cloud" and anti-virus companies just send you updates like all other software.

Microsoft is already running "rent-it-by-the-hour" software in the cloud.  That dumbs-down the requirement for being a typist.

Less and less THINKING ABILITY is required to do jobs, so they can "employ" average people (who abound in numbers).

Today, schooling generally consists of learning to use an iPad to access Wikipedia. 

What kind of future are the current teens envisioning? 

IQ 100 people expect to get paid what an IQ 130 person would be worth. 

Do you think that will happen (there's a novel in that) -- and then what about the IQ80 folks, whose numbers likewise abound?

Who's going to create the tech that does the actual work FOR the IQ 100 employee?  Will that IQ 130 person get paid more than the IQ 100 person who uses what the IQ 130 person creates?

Why didn't we have this problem BEFORE World War II?

Well, we did.

Remember, another argument against employing women at equal pay is that women aren't as good at working, aren't as smart as men which is why women shouldn't be allowed to go to college.

Now remember what you read (I hope you've read it by now) in the Darkover Series by Marion Zimmer Bradley.  Inside every man there's a woman/ inside every woman there's a man.

We are all both.

The paradigm technology broke was the link between gender and dependence.  What technology didn't break -- what it actually exaggerated, is the link between PROVIDER and the DEPENDENT.

The reason we didn't have "a problem" before WWII is that we had a PROVIDER who provided for a FAMILY.

We had a classic nuclear family structure consisting of provider, and dependents.

Today, the family is shattered.  With each decade the man/woman/marriage/kids paradigm is dissolving away.

There are those today who scream bloody murder over this dissolution.

But we're romance writers.  We write romance novels for a reason.  It's not going away. 

Soul-Mates isn't going away.  "The Family" as we knew it is never coming back.

We are in the process (look again at the interlinked sine-waves -- PROCESS)  of creating a new paradigm for family.

The economic basis for FAMILY is what always held it together, but that grip created a great deal of serious Evil with a capital E while it was about doing all that good for humanity.

The Evil in the old-fashioned family was that it was a trap that stole a woman's FREE WILL.

Remember philosophically I'm really bugs on FREE WILL CHOICES.  It's the free will choice that starts a novel, that impels a character onto a path of confronting a conflict and resolving it. 

Without free will choice, there is no story, and I'm all about STORY TELLING.

The stories I see that now need telling are stories about NEW TYPES OF FAMILIES.

And the opportunity I see in the past I've described here since WWII is the creation of a new family consisting of a bread-winner, a PROVIDER and his/her DEPENDENTS, regardless of the ages, genders, IQ or talents of either provider or dependents.

That's the argument for gay-marriage as a legally supported institution. 

The element, though, that both straight and gay communities have lost over the last decades is the permanents of marriage.  The concept "marriage" shouldn't necessarily have so much to do with gender as it does with provider/dependent agreements.

Note how I described the typical wife's life in the 1940's -- that's a dependent, yes, but not someone who does not "work."  Wives contributed, as did kids.  We now legally prevent kids from contributing.  That needs some serious thinking (I'm adamantly against exploitation, but it makes dynamite story material.)

One of the reasons Rosy the Riveter revolted in the 1970's was that "women's work" (e.g. housework) was as physically demanding as "men's work" but garnered nothing but contempt from society (except on Mother's Day an invention of commercial interests).

The New Family Structure has to include serious respect and rewards for the economic dependent that rival or exceed the respect and rewards garnered by the provider. 

Remember that sine-wave.  We're going to get to parity between provider and dependent, but at that point there will be more kinetic energy than potential energy and we will blast right through parity to another imbalance (though none of us may live to see that happen.)

So fasten your creative mind around that picture of the world your reader lives in.

Now REPLICATE THAT SHAPE -- not the details, but the shape -- in the world you are building for your characters to romp through an adventure in, taking those readers along with them.  The world you build has to be familiar enough to your reader that it doesn't distract them from the story, and at the same time contain some unfamiliar elements that shadow the developments your reader unconsciously expects to see in the real world around them.

Shadow is the substance of fiction.  But it has to be a shadow of reality.

by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Sunday, July 07, 2013

Update From A Pirate

Why is it, I wonder, that any alleged pirate can post a few "figleaf words" on his or her site, and they automatically receive the benefit of the doubt?

For instance, "....does not host any files to items listed. We simply index file links we have found on other websites on the web (similar way to how Google works!)" or claims to be "non-profit" while set up with PayPal to take donations and subscriptions such as "You can now buy a 10 Day 'Limited' Trial to Supporters Club for just $4.99"

Someone forwarded this email from one of the allegedly most egregious, allegedly for profit  alleged pirates ever to be ignored by the authorities and by the Big Tech businesses that profit from his activities. (PayPal, SocialGo, Googlegroups, Picasa, Yahoo.)

I will post it almost as written, with two especially interesting passages in bold)
Quoting:

Hi Everyone

It's been an almost impossible week!

The main club computer crashed. I sent it for repair, but it has come back with even more faults!

I cannot unzip files
The browsers keep crashing
The computer shuts itself down randomly
I cannot re-instate programs we need to run the club properly

I am going to try once more to zero the computer and start afresh, on Monday, but I fear it will need a new master-board, power supply and hard disks

It lasted almost 5 years, so I can't complain too much.

I have prepared Monday's page (Mix 163) via an Internet cafe, and will send this out sometime tomorrow, giving me time on Monday to see about what can be done with the computer, although, I think  we will be forced to buy a new one. Either way, it will take me most of the week to re-instate everything on the computer

I have many more files to add to Gigatribe and to send out to the members, but until I can unzip and store them (even our external hard disks are full), there is not much I can do!

The club is over $300 in the red at the moment, so we need a little financial support from the membership to get over these problems. I wouldn't ask, if we weren't in such a dire position!

Remember, we are a 'non-profit' organization, and a need a little help every now and then!

Please help with as much as you can afford, by making a donation......


Unquoting.

For those who don't see what I see, having files on a computer or in zipped format and uploading them to Gigatribe is not my understanding of how a Search function works, and is not what Google does.

What do you think? And why do you think there is so much apathy about piracy among authors?

Musicians and movie makers appear to have made considerable headway with this particular, for-subscriptions alleged pirate. Moreover, although this alleged pirate might distribute an album occasionally, that is one work. With authors, he will give away almost everything a self-published, relatively new author may have written (multiple e-books) in one "Mix"..... as he does to two authors in particular with "Monday's Mix 163".

Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry
SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/ 

Thursday, July 04, 2013

Beauty and the Beast

Happy Independence Day to all our American readers!

Do you feel let down when the Beast changes into a prince? I always do; to me that moment feels anticlimactic. I was surprised to learn that not everybody reacts that way. Suzy McKee Charnas wrote a provocative essay exploring the appeal of the Beast:

The Beast’s Embrace

I don’t necessarily believe the fascination of the “Beauty and the Beast” myth always involves every motif she discusses. But many points in this essay resonate with me.

To me, the fascination of the Beast arises from his Otherness. By comparison, the handsome prince seems bland. Also, the original fairy tale describes the Beast as ugly. However, I have never seen a dramatization of the classic tale in which I think the Beast looks ugly. He impresses me as a majestic, fur-clad predator and therefore alluring rather than repulsive. Oddly, for me, the Disney version succeeds better than most others in making the Beast’s transformation at the climax into the heart-stirring eucatastrophe it’s supposed to be. For one thing, the Disney Beast has earned his restoration by redeeming himself through love and self-sacrifice. The classic fairy tale hero is presented as a noble creature all along, merely trapped in the guise of a monster by an act of seemingly random malice.

I tend to agree with the princess in a parodic skit on the old children’s TV show THE ELECTRIC COMPANY. When she kisses a frog and he transforms, she says, “If I’d wanted a prince, I’da kissed a prince.”

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Tuesday, July 02, 2013

Targeting a Readership Part 9: Creating a Market by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Below is Targeting a Readership Part 9, BUT FIRST!!!!!

-------------ANNOUNCEMENT----------
It's official. The Sime~Gen RPG has been announced and you can SIGN UP for a Newsletter, and watch all the fun and excitement as the word spreads about the upcoming KICKSTARTER.

This announcement is from Loreful about AMBROV X:


Kickstarter on Sept. 3, 2013. We are launching AmbrovX.com as well as all of our social media channels. From today until the Sept 3rd, we will be slowly growing our social media presence and awareness of Ambrov X, our Kickstarter and our presence at the Cincy Comicon on Sept. 6-8. To do that we need your help!

If you would be so kind as to follow, like and/or share our channels we would be eternally grateful to you.

Our Social Media Channels are as follows:

Website:



-------------END ANNOUNCEMENT-------------------
==============
Targeting a Readership Part 9: Creating a Market by Jacqueline Lichtenberg


The previous 8 parts of this Targeting a Readership Series can be found here:

Targeting Readership Part 1 is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/targeting-readership-part-one.html

Part 2 is inside this post:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html

Part 3 is inside and woven into the following post in my Astrology Just For Writers series which by mistake has the same number as the previous part but is really Part 7:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/11/astrology-just-for-writers-part-6.html

Targeting a Readership Part 4 is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/06/targeting-readership-part-4.html

Targeting a Readership Part 5 is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/07/targeting-readership-part-5-where-is.html

Targeting a Readership Part 6 is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/04/targeting-readership-part-6.html

Targeting a Readership Part 7 is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/04/targeting-readership-part-7-guest-post.html  A guest post by Valerie Valdes on use of setting

Targeting a Readership Part 8 is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/06/targeting-readership-part-8-anne-pinzow.html  A guest post by Anne Phyllis Pinzow, a journalist who has created a readership for a newspaper after its readership evaporated.

Note at the end of her guest post, Anne sums up the difference between 1955 and 2013 in terms of the themes exemplified in film:

Fifty's movie glorifies honor.

2013 TV series glorifies, well, Machiavelli and the uselessness of honor.

This and other value-shifts have been noted by many people -- some with approval and some with disapproval.  Which attitudes are good and which are bad is not what WRITERS must figure out.  We must be able to portray all sides of any issue, speak from the mouth of any character espousing any attitude and do it convincingly. 

As Gene Roddenberry taught me, fiction is about asking questions not answering them.  Frame it, pose it, exemplify it in the CHARACTER, SETTING, THEME,  CONFLICT AND PLOT, keep it out of the words and in the visual symbolism, then tell the story.

That's what Robert Heinlein taught other SF writers, just TELL A WHOPPING GOOD STORY because you're competing for beer money.  Or maybe today, white wine -- whatever Romance readers want to drink.  A paperback costs about what a drink in a bar might cost - a little less some places. 

Today you are also competing for your reader's time because the proliferation of media forces people to decide which media to consume in their shrinking spare-time-moments.

Knowing what you're competing against (other media, other relaxing pass-times, not other writers), allows you a chance to build an audience, a market that will prefer your product over others.

So here is Part 9 developing these notions into the study of creating an audience to target -- from scratch. 

So on the SimeGen Group on Facebook, Donna Michele Fernstrom posted this link to an article about the dropping price of self-published e-books:

http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/self-published-ebooks-are-nos-1-and-2-best-sellers-average-price-drops-to-all-time-low/

I commented on the Group:

Jacqueline Lichtenberg: There is always the factor of "supply and demand" reflected in "price." And there is the principle that the lower the price, the higher the demand. But there are a lot of other variables in any market situation. Each story is a "unique" product.

And Donna answered:

Donna Michele Fernstrom: Absolutely true. Also true is that we haven't figured out what the threshold is for something to 'go viral' and become so wildly popular.

Which raised a whole lot of thoughts about the "go viral" phenomenon.

Perhaps we haven't found the threshold because there isn't one?

Perhaps it's not a certain number of people reposting something that causes the notion to "go viral" -- perhaps going viral is more about WHO the item reaches, not about how many of them there are?

I also remember, from several years ago, an item by a social media expert marketer who pointed out you don't have to amass a gigantic following to leverage your social media followers into a living-wage.  You really (as a self-publisher) only need to reach 1,000 people who become hooked on your stuff and will buy anything you write/publish. 

I think there's some serious truth in that.  You don't need the whole world at your doorstep to make a living from writing.  But publishing is hard, which is why it's expensive and publishers pay writers a pittance compared to the prices they charge, because the rest is overhead and their salaries.

Publishing involves content-editing, copy-editing, creation of the product, distribution of the product, advertising of the product -- it's a full time job for a lot of people to transport a story from a writer's computer to a reader's eyes.

So a product, to be viable in the marketplace has to reach more than 1,000 people who will grab it.

Creating product is one thing; creating the business to transport that product is quite another.

So with the massive shift in publishing due to the explosion of electronic media, I've been watching for success stories among the abundance of failures I've been seeing.

Anne Pinzow has had some success finding stories the newspaper readers want to read (non-fiction, mind you!).  It took years for the readers of the newspaper to discover that suddenly THIS paper contains the exact information they want to know, that no other paper even mentioned.  But the paper, as a business, isn't quite making the dollars it must to survive even as its fame increases.  It's exploring options to go online.

I know another local paper printed newspaper that I read is promising not to stop printing on paper, but is building their online presence as fast as they can right after that paper got sold to new owners.  I don't think the print edition will survive. 

And I worked for a print publication that went down over the same print/costs issues. 

I'm sure you all saw this in the Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathleen-miles/koch-brothers-la-times_b_3180391.html

That's about the Koch Brothers bidding for failing newspapers, such as the LA Times.

When wielders of such massive fortunes as the Koch Brothers command make a move, you have to ask yourself what do they know that we don't know?

PAPER IS DEAD, right?  I mean iPad and Kindle have become the subscription media for reading magazines and newspapers.  Online (especially mobile) advertising just isn't paying the way yet, but people are starting to pay to get past the online pay-wall and get deeper articles. 

There's a market for "news" and "commentary/analysis" -- and that requires a staff of hundreds to tromp over to the scene of an event and poke around, collecting the information you would collect if you were at the event.  This saves you the time and travel - you can't be everywhere, but reporters can be.

So the process of gathering, editing, and distributing NEWS is still a viable part of a business model.  There's a market for well digested, well presented, succinct and accurate information.

The way to make a profit on finding, digesting, and delivering that information is still changing -- businessmen are searching for the method that will leverage the electronic age into serious profit.

The Koch Brothers -- famous or maybe infamous for their Right Wing stance -- are looking at buying out the remnants of famous old newspapers as a framework for rebuilding their readerships just as Anne Pinzow found a method of writing news articles that readers of a printed paper wanted to read (and talk about -- her articles get coverage on local radio).

The only newspapers really left standing specialize in local news.  National and international are on TV, Radio, and online.

That's the very lucrative non-fiction market impacted by the electronic revolution. 

But what about fiction?  What about Romance? 

Romance novels represent a niche market, a specific and very exactly defined market.  We, here, add in all kinds of other spice -- Paranormal, Interstellar wars, aliens, and any and every manner of Fantasy creature, but it's still all about Romance.  Romance is what we DO -- if there's a human around anywhere, love is what drives the plot, any plot and every plot. 

What we want in our fiction is a specific, defined and specialized as the Koch Brothers "Right Wing" niche activities. 

The Koch Brothers item on their interest in buying the LA Times newspaper (did you know that decades ago the LA Times was right wing?) "went viral" when it hit the blogosphere and was carried by the various news services (which still exist but don't function as well as they once did).

Follow the Koch Brothers story as a lesson in "going viral."

The Koch Brothers story even turned up on The Blaze, the TV network created (from absolute scratch) by Glenn Beck.

I've discussed Glenn Beck at far more length than he deserves in previous posts here,

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/10/glenn-beck-didnt-invent-overton-window.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/10/worldbuilding-with-fire-and-ice-part-i.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/11/worldbuilding-with-fire-and-ice-part-ii.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/11/worldbuilding-with-fire-and-ice-part.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/02/how-to-change-perception-of-romance.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/08/finding-good-paranormal-romance.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/08/worldbuilding-with-fire-and-ice-part-7.html

...but we must revisit his progress now in order to get a grasp on the possibilities for Romance to create its market in online streaming video, talk, author interviews, old movies, NEW MOVIES, and series. 

A lot of what is labeled "Romance" is actually erotica or smut that's had the Romance part stripped out.  Purified of the Romance parts, raw sexuality has a major market appeal, and makes lots of money.  But the overall subject of my blog entries here is elevating the respect for the Romance genre, for the Romance story, and the Romance novel -- fiction with a core driving force toward a Happily Ever After ending. 

As a writer, to let your characters plausibly achieve "happily ever after" or the HEA, you have to do a lot of clinically distant, unemotional, analysis of what "happiness" is, where it comes from, why some people have it and others don't, and how to change those who don't into those who do.

Fiction is all about CONFLICT, you know, and the resolution of a conflict requires the main character to CHANGE.  In a Romance the change is from a person who does not have happiness into a person who does have happiness, and not only that but into a person who has crossed a one-way threshold into a realm of living where the happiness quotient will never subside below a certain level.  That requires an internal change in the character, a spiritual enlightenment, a serious personality reset.  "Life" is always the same; your view of it can change. 

Yes, after The End, the level of happiness a character feels does go down, and life gets to be "life" again -- but the "ever after" part puts a floor under the down.

Maybe the floor is at the level of simple contentment, or maybe it's a bit above mere contentment, but from that floor the person's happiness quotient goes UP again, then down a little, and UP again, down a little, then UP again etc in an up-trend -- something special and very significant changes inside that Main Character in a Romance that achieves a new level of HAPPINESS that is permanent and ever-after increases from there.   

That's what a Romance is all about. 

I seriously doubt you'll easily find a single outlet in streaming or cable that specializes in that kind of story. 

The level of rejection among the general population of the HEA as realistic is so high that this HEA kind of fiction is regarded as wish-fulfillment-fantasy and thus childishly self-indulgent fare of a loser. 

That is exactly the way science fiction fans were regarded before Star Trek. 

Glenn Beck has created, in The Blaze online newspaper and his streaming subscription network, ( http://theblaze.com ) a vehicle for a "message" that is as horrendously scorned as "starships" were before Star Trek, and Romance with an HEA ending is now scorned.

His message has nothing (at all) to do with our message, but his business success has everything to do with our goals because he has started from the same place we are in right now -- a large, lucrative, steady, hungry market with no real vehicle serving that market.  And he's built something that is -- almost -- showing signs of actual success. 

Glenn has done what we want to do but with non-fiction. 

My point here is that when it comes to Targeting a Readership, to finding or creating or gathering an audience, a market, when it comes to the business end of story-telling, there's no difference between fiction and non-fiction. 

Actually, watch a little Glenn Beck and that distinction between fiction and non-fiction blurs completely! 

He got his start in show business as a clown, did talk radio (and still does), and basically spins a narrative web out of current events and into a fictional reality all his own.

But many are absorbed by his reality.  I think that's because, several times an hour, he actually says something that's true, but that nobody else is saying, often something you wouldn't likely know because you don't have the army of researchers he has.  What makes his audience stick with him is that scattering of obscure facts that fill their hunger for information.  I suspect few of his audience use that information to derive the scenarios Beck specializes in.  But facts are hard to come by these days, so I suspect a lot of his viewers and readers are doing their own thinking with his facts -- thinking he probably couldn't replicate. 

He has some very smart people working for him, and that shows in the research behind what he presents.  His people dig up real, solid information, stuff you want to know even if you never suspected it was going on.  What he does with that solid information is --- well, that's another matter.

The important point to learn from studying The Blaze is the business model.

As a businessman, Beck is superb, insightful, fast moving, and in full command of the basic process of building a business.  He's had successes and failures, and he's learned from all of them, even though as he emphasizes, he has very little formal education.  In fact, his lack of formal education is part of the reason for his success.  With The Blaze, he's done something NEW and it seems to be proving to be profitable. 

The specific audience you and I are after is very different from Beck's primary audience, but the business model that seems to be working for him could work for Romance. 

Search on Google for
romance channel online 

...and you'll find a number of attempts to do something with "Romance" that are similar to what Beck has done and is doing.  There's a lot of research someone planning to launch such a project with Alien Romance would have to do.  But there's room for a replica of The Blaze focused on the Romance Genre instead of religion and politics. 

I suspect Romance Readers/Viewers out-number Beck's audience.  So take a look at what's going on with him in 2013.

After the resounding loss of the 2012 election, Beck moped in public for a while, then "doubled down." 

He had a business plan that spanned 5 years, a plan to build his newspaper (The Blaze) and his streaming subscription TV online thing called GBTV and his publishing business Mercury Arts which also owns his radio show, into a single operation.  He was adding TV streaming shows one at a time and producing a few "specials" covering topics in depth, building methodically.  With the loss of the election, he decided to execute that 5 year plan in 2 years to build a platform before the 2014 elections.

He's worried about the direction of the country on a person-by-person level, about the values preferred by the general public today.  Anne Pinzow pointed out one clear observation about this in Targeting a Readership Part 8, as I quoted above, and you really should read what she wrote about how she came by this observation:
---------
Fifty's movie glorifies honor.

2013 TV series glorifies, well, Machiavelli and the uselessness of honor.
------------

Substitute the word "Romance" for the word "Honor" and you have a perfect description of our problem.  Now juxtapose that with an analysis of Beck's approach to exactly the same problem -- the general public does not share our sense of the plausibility (in real life) of the HEA.

Beck cites a peck or two of various Values he feels have been "lost."  But he's found a large enough audience ( over 300,000 paying subscribers which is more than that 1,000 cited by the social media marketing expert) to support a delivery channel for that exact set of values.

Early in 2013, Beck started a campaign to rename his fledgling network from GBTV.com to theblaze.com -- combining the video delivery and newspaper style delivery.  And he launched a bid to get his streaming-only TV channel (which had several shows, but not 24 hours of programming) onto cable systems.  The audience response was tremendous, and several small cable systems came onboard immediately, then I lost count. 

How many cable systems carry The Blaze now?  The thing is, I don't know.  It changes constantly. 

In April 2013, Beck announced a Pennsylvania cable system acquired The Blaze TV channel, after I think it was 5 small local cable systems had signed on.  In May a big cable system, Optimum, acquired The Blaze for it's upper tier subscribers in the North East.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/05/01/theblaze-extends-its-reach-announces-tv-deal-with-tri-state-cable-provider/

------quote from Optimum----------
“TheBlaze is the rare independent network that has a built in passionate audience, and therefore adds value to Optimum TV’s channel line-up,” TheBlaze President of Business Development Lynne Costantini said in a statement. “TheBlaze serves a growing conservative and libertarian audience, and we are pleased to work with Cablevision on bringing our network to Optimum TV customers.”

TheBlaze TV will be available in May to Optimum’s residential customers with the Optimum Preferred, Silver and Gold Packages.
---------end quote----------

"Optimum" is by Cablevision. 

------------quote-------
Cablevision Systems Corporation is one of the nation’s leading media and telecommunications companies. In addition to delivering its Optimum-branded cable, Internet, and voice offerings throughout the New York area, the company owns and operates cable systems serving homes in four Western states. Cablevision’s local media properties include News 12 Networks, MSG Varsity and Newsday Media Group. Cablevision also owns and operates Clearview Cinemas. Additional information about Cablevision is available on the Web at www.cablevision.com.
----------end quote-------

Here's another announcement Beck's newsletter carried the same day:
----------quote----------
TheBlaze TV adds another major cable provider  
Today is a big day not only for TheBlaze TV but for you. It was YOU who let your voice be heard when you demanded (and continue to demand) TheBlaze TV be carried by your TV provider. Cablevision, one of the largest providers in the country and one of the most influential, has now announced it will carry TheBlaze.
--------end quote---------

"...that has a built in passionate audience..."  does that sound familiar?

At about the same time Optimum Cablevision announced The Blaze, The Blaze announced acquiring a programming addition to their children's program.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/05/02/glenn-beck-announces-theblaze-tv-partnership-with-mega-hollywood-filmmaker/

------quote------
Glenn Beck on Thursday announced a new partnership for TheBlaze TV with major Hollywood producer Gerald Molen, whose credits include “Jurassic Park,” “Schindler’s List” and last year’s “2016: Obama’s America.”

TheBlaze TV’s children’s education program “Liberty Treehouse” will start showcasing student work from “Sneak on the Lot,” an experiential curriculum for aspiring young filmmakers developed by Molen and partners Darrin Fletcher and Chet Thomas.
---------end quote-------

Previously, in April came this announcement:

http://www.gettheblaze.com/updates/2013/3/28/theblaze-launches-247-network-on-blue-ridge-communications-a.html
------quote--------
New York – March 28, 2013 – TheBlaze announced today that it has entered into a carriage agreement with Blue Ridge Communications, the nation’s 21st largest cable operator. TheBlaze will launch on Blue Ridge Communications in April.

After a tremendous start on DISH Network, the TheBlaze has also entered into agreements with BEK Communications, Sweetwater Cable Television and Atwood Cable.
-------end quote---------

Beck's vision includes a hard-news gathering network spread internationally but as far as I know that hasn't launched yet.  The news items on The Blaze website are becoming better written and more diverse with skyrocketing hit-rates. 

In April 2013 I think April 30, Beck's publishing arm released a non-fiction book about the gun control issue, and as of May 2 that book was #1 Amazon paper best seller, and had been in the top 100 for 18 days (pre-publication counts, I suppose).

http://www.amazon.com/Control-Exposing-Truth-About-Guns/dp/1476739870/

--------blurb quote--------
When our founding fathers secured the Constitutional “right of the people to keep and bear arms,” they also added the admonition that this right SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.

It is the only time this phrase appears in the Bill of Rights. So why aren’t more people listening?

History has proven that guns are essential to self-defense and liberty—but tragedy is a powerful force and has led many to believe that guns are the enemy, that the Second Amendment is outdated, and that more restrictions or outright bans on firearms will somehow solve everything.

They are wrong.

In CONTROL, Glenn Beck presents a passionate, fact-based case for guns that reveals why gun control isn’t really about controlling guns at all; it’s about controlling us. In doing so, he takes on and debunks the common myths and outright lies that are often used to vilify guns and demean their owners:

The Second Amendment is ABOUT MUSKETS . . . GUN CONTROL WORKS in other countries . . . 40 percent of all guns are sold without BACKGROUND CHECKS . . . More GUNS MEAN more MURDER . . . Mass shootings are becoming more common . . . These awful MASSACRES ARE UNIQUE TO AMERICA . . . No CIVILIAN needs a “weapon of war” like the AR-15 . . . ARMED GUARDS in schools do nothing, just look at Columbine . . . Stop FEARMONGERING, no one is talking about TAKING YOUR GUNS AWAY.

Backed by hundreds of sources, this handbook gives everyone who cares about the Second Amendment the indisputable facts they need to reclaim the debate, defeat the fear, and take back their natural rights.
--------end quote----------

Reread that and substitute "HEA" for "gun."    

You all know how Romance often hinges on the twin issues of Control and Safety.  Have you been watching the 2013 TV episodes of Beauty and the Beast? The whole romance between the genetically altered guy (yeah, a hunk) and the Beauty of a police detective is based on "I want to keep you safe."  Safety is the sexiest issue out there! 

The constitution does guarantee the right to the pursuit of happiness (not the catching of it, just the pursuit, not the HEA), so there's an equivalence between the Gun Control issue and the HEA issue that's eerie.  Our topic is just as unpopular as Beck's topic -- and the comparison of Romance and Gun Control is even more appropriate if you consider the sex/violence paradigm. 

Beck has amassed major marketing power with a subject-niche market that's smaller than ours.  Color us embarrassed?  What could we do with the tools he's using?

Keep in mind that Oprah Winfrey was likewise a popular talk-show host who went off and created her own network, OWN I think it was called, and starting it on Cable, she didn't succeed.  Beck started streaming online subscriber-only, and is now inching onto Cable with a proven product way ahead of his own schedule, and his network is adding shows.  His children's show adding young student producers education is important because he's decided the problem with America lies in how kids are being educated. 

We have to follow in these business-model footsteps and infect the hearts and minds of our estranged audience with Love, and perhaps Beck is right that the place to start is with children's programming.

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Sunday, June 30, 2013

Singers and Songwriters are Canaries in the Gold Mine

What do Harlequin (Publishing) and Pandora (music streaming) have in common?

For one thing, in my opinion, they are both major businesses attempting to screw content creators any way they can, using ruthless (as it seems to me) legal manoeuvres to change laws and find loopholes in contracts so that they pay less and pocket more.

I think, but I often feel that I am nearly alone in my suspicions, that the almost universal acceptance of copyright infringement, and the attempts by powerful lobbies to make online "looting" legal, is going to result in more and more big businesses trying to find ways to exploit content creators. It is not going to stop with the "free music" movement.

Music is a shot across the bows for authors.

Moreover, the liberal Media is mostly on the side of Big Business. How ironic. The ignorance of the media is absolutely gobsmacking. For instance, one article stated  "this is a choice about how America wants to subsidize its musicians and other artists."

Word to the wise, America does not "subsidize" musicians and authors and artists. Musicians, and authors, and artists, and other creators are paid royalties, which are a fraction of the profits made on legal sales or licensed rights of copies of their creations. If their good stuff is not paid for, they don't get paid.

For The Trichordist's perspective on Pandora, look here:

http://thetrichordist.com/2013/06/28/artists-speak-out-on-pandoras-proposed-royalty-rate-cuts/

Streaming music is likely to be a very big deal, and some suggest that fewer people will "share" music illegally if they can subscribe to a legal service, but ... how much better will that be for songwriters and musicians if a song can be played 3,000,000 times and the musician gets $30 ?

Is it inconceivable that the same could happen to authors on day? An e-book is "read" 3,000,000 times, and the author gets $30?

Reference: Songwriter Ellen Shipley in Digitial Music News, “My Song Was Played 3.1 Million Times on Pandora. My Check Was $39…

This recent study http://musically.com/2013/01/16/copy-culture-study-outlines-us-and-german-filesharing-streaming-habits/ finds that, "Nearly half of adults in the US and Germany participate in a broad, informal ‘copy culture’ characterised by the copying, sharing, and downloading of music, movies, TV shows, and other digital mediaT 

Some "sharing" and re-selling of digital content has been made legal in Europe, and may be made legal in the USA at some point in the future. If it happens, Big Business is ready.... and authors are not ready, and won't know what hit them.

An older study http://piracy.americanassembly.org/the-copy-culture-survey-infringement-and-enforcement-in-the-us/ from 2011 and based on a relatively small sample found, among many things that piracy is common (46%), and almost 70% of the population are opposed to copyright enforcement or to meaningful copyright penalties for repeat offenders.

Ah, well. All I can say is that I encourage authors to join the copyrightalliance.org and at the very least to refrain from infringing the copyrights of cover models, photographers, musicians and other creators because at some point, creators may need to come to the table with clean hands and support one another.

On a happier note, I am pleased to announce that on Tuesday July 2nd my 5pm Eastern Time radio show on pwrtalk.com will be Real History And Regency Marriage with Romance Author Cheryl Bolen.

Rowena Cherry

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/ 
‘Piracy’ is common
‘Piracy’ is common. Some 46% of adults have bought, copied, or downloaded unauthorized music, TV shows or movies. - See more at: http://piracy.americanassembly.org/the-copy-culture-survey-infringement-and-enforcement-in-the-us/#sthash.x8Ufk7Iq.dpuf
‘Piracy’ is common. Some 46% of adults have bought, copied, or downloaded unauthorized music, TV shows or movies.* - See more at: http://piracy.americanassembly.org/the-copy-culture-survey-infringement-and-enforcement-in-the-us/#sthash.x8Ufk7Iq.dpuf
‘Piracy’ is common. Some 46% of adults have bought, copied, or downloaded unauthorized music, TV shows or movies.* - See more at: http://piracy.americanassembly.org/the-copy-culture-survey-infringement-and-enforcement-in-the-us/#sthash.x8Ufk7Iq.dpuf

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Naming Characters

In reading the latest novel in an epic fantasy series, I noticed that three unrelated characters, a major one and two important secondary ones, have almost identical names. I can imagine how that coincidence could have happened, if in the development of the earlier books the author created each character separately and assigned him or her the name that sounded appropriate at the time. In a cast of, if not thousands or hundreds, at least dozens, it gets hard to keep all the names distinctive. Yet that’s an important factor in preventing reader confusion—especially in epic fantasies with huge casts.

Some authors feature a list of characters at the beginning of each book. Do you think most readers find that kind of thing helpful or intimidating (good grief, I have to keep track of all these people?!)? To me, it’s a little of both. A long cast list can strike me as mind-boggling, but I do appreciate being able to look up a person if I’ve momentarily forgotten who he or she is.

Do you find that in creating characters you tend to reuse favorite names (given or surnames)? Or catch yourself starting most of your fictional names with the same few letters or sounds? I’ve noticed that quirk in my own writing. I have to watch myself for lapsing into those patterns and make a conscious effort to venture into areas of the alphabet I’ve previously neglected. (For some reason, I have an odd tropism toward K and L.)

Another consideration in naming characters is making them sound ethnically consistent within a fictional culture. In the “melting pot” of the United States, we might readily find people with names such as Joshua Chen or Natasha O’Toole. In most societies, however, names have more uniformity, and incongruities like that would have to be justified by a multicultural history similar to ours. Then there’s the situation TVTropes.org labels “Aerith and Bob”—a very commonplace name surrounded by exotic or alien ones. Of course, incongruity can be used deliberately for humor, such as my iridescent blob of tentacles and eyestalks called Wilbur, in my short erotic romances “Tentacles of Love” and “Weird Wedding Guest.” (Although that choice didn’t come out of thin air; he’s named after Wilbur Whateley in H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror.”)

Weird Wedding Guest

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Targeting a Readership Part 8: Anne Pinzow Guest Post Machiavelli and the Internet by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Targeting a Readership Part 8: Anne Pinzow Guest Post Machiavelli and the Internet by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Here are previous posts in this series:

Targeting Readership Part 1 is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/targeting-readership-part-one.html

Part 2 is inside this post:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html

Part 3 is inside and woven into the following post in my Astrology Just For Writers series which by mistake has the same number as the previous part but is really Part 7:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/11/astrology-just-for-writers-part-6.html

Targeting a Readership Part 4 is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/06/targeting-readership-part-4.html

Targeting a Readership Part 5 is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/07/targeting-readership-part-5-where-is.html

Targeting a Readership Part 6 is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/04/targeting-readership-part-6.html

Targeting a Readership Part 7 is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/04/targeting-readership-part-7-guest-post.html  A guest post by Valerie Valdes on use of setting


Over the last few weeks, I've been kicking around some topics with Anne Pinzow, a Journalist by profession who likes the same kinds of fiction I do. 

Many of those topics center around trying to define the core essence of the shift in content, Theme (as I've discussed extensively on this blog), and focus of current TV  fiction, movies, and even fanfic. 

Another set of topics center around analyzing the financial markets, international affairs, local politics, and other elements of the reality our target readers are embedded within.

Anne thinks pretty much the same way I do, but most often comes to different conclusions using the same input and the same thinking methods.  This makes her a fabulous sounding board for ideas, and a never-ending source of enlightenment.

It's not surprising.  We were trained by the same book editor and agent.  We think of fiction in very similar commercial terms.

So recently I was explaining my take on the effect of the U.S. Fed's printing way too much money being ratcheting up of inflation.  Additionally we were also kicking around the behavior of politicians which we agreed hasn't changed much in our lifetimes: they use many methods to avoid conveying the truth to their constituents.

Both of these ongoing conversations with Anne were in progress during the days that I was reading the latest novel of Darkover -- now that Deborah J. Ross has taken over continuing the series. 

That is The Children of Kings. 

Side note, Marion really hated having the word "The" at the beginning of a book title, but her submission titles were often changed and a The inserted. 

Ross has captured a lot of the "feel" of Marion's vision of Darkover in this volume, so I think it's worth reading if you've read the other novels.



The Children of Kings is about two heirs to different titled positions on Darkover and a woman who is forging a new path, plus another woman from the Drytowns who wears the chains of a Drytown woman but doesn't link them to her wrists.  It could qualify as a Romance but no sex scenes -- it ends with a marriage proposal, too.

In all cases, the characters make their decisions and take their actions based on their own ideas of what constitutes the honorable path.  No effort or risk is avoided to act in the most honorable way possible.  That kind of behavior distinguishes Darkover culture from the goings-on in the surrounding galactic civilization which is in the midst of a civil war, and possibly an irretrievable breakup.

In other words, the galaxy that Darkover is living in pretty much resembles our world today -- eerie coincidence.

The novel gives the reader a great deal of food for thought on the matter of what Honor has to do with Adulthood.

So with that as a backdrop, I was talking to Anne via chat, and kicking around both current events and the TV shows we had in common.

And recently, Anne sent me the following contrast/compare commentary that I want to share with you as another example of how a professional writer thinks, how a professional writer observes the world around them, and how a professional writer with honor can acknowledge when someone else has nailed a point worth considering. 


------------Quote From Anne Pinzow---------------
So, last week my Cablevision bill jumped $6 and that pissed me off so I called and at first they were telling me that I was paying for the least expensive package that carried the channels I watch. So I said I'd get rid of the "optimum online" aspect of the whole thing because I'd still get the channels and I could still catch up on missed shows online.

All of a sudden I got switched to another customer assistant and they told me that if I switched to the Silver service (which is $20 less than what I was paying) I'd not only get to keep the optima online but I'd get most of the movie premium channels, HB0, Showtime, STARZ, etc. It's all included now, they said.

That's how I ended up watching a Showtime series that started about two years ago called The Borgia about the reign, so to speak, of Pope Alexander the VI, the father of Lucretia Borgia. If you remember, that period has always been of interest to me.

So, there's a scene, actually several of them, where Machiavelli, known for the philosophy of the end justifying the means is advising one of the characters about how to treat a particular situation. The instance that really struck me for the purpose of this email is one character was being tortured in order to force him to confess to heresy. They tried everything and the guy wouldn't do it. He was very near death and still would not sign. So the boss of the torturer signed the confession with the man's name and killed the witnesses. Now he's got the signed confession that everyone wants and the prisoner gets burned at the stake, a nice entertainment for the kiddies.

Keep the above in mind.

So today I'm doing interviewing this man for a story and he tells me that his great uncle was Marty Maher. Well I don't know if you know who this guy was but he was very well known in this area as being a very colorful character and having had worked at West Point for 55 years. There was a book written about him called "Bringing up the Brass" and a movie staring Tyrone Power, called "The Long Gray Line."

I loved that movie, made in the 1955 and so I got it and was watching it. There's the scene where a cadet had gone slightly off limits because of worry about his girlfriend. No one knew about it except Maher who was not "an informer". So then Maher sees that the cadet is walking punishment tours and later is astonished to learn that even though the cadet only broke a rule walking by about 20 feet away from the main gate and "got away with it," that he turned himself in. "Well that's the honor system."

Fifty's movie glorifies honor.
2013 TV series glorifies, well, Machiavelli and the uselessness of honor.

You're point, right there.

----------------------- END QUOTE------------------

So there you have it, a perfect description of the audience you must Target if you want to sell to these premium Cable networks, and the financial pressures that targeted readership labors under.

by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Vat-Grown Meat

Father’s Day dinner at a steak restaurant reminded me of the futuristic concept of growing meat from cell cultures in vats. It turns out such a process has already been achieved, although nowhere near on a commercially economical level:

In Vitro Meat

Would “meat”—or “shmeat” as it's sometimes called—produced by this method satisfy the objections of vegetarians, since it doesn’t involve eating formerly living animals? According to the writer of the Wikipedia article, it probably would. Would vat-grown “pork” that looks and tastes like the natural meat but doesn’t come from real pigs be kosher? Or not, because the original muscle cells used to start the culture did come from a pig?

This idea reminds me of a punny Damon Knight story, “Eripmav,” about a world of intelligent plants where trees are made of meat. (The sap-sucking plant vampire gets destroyed by a steak through the heart.) Would a sapient plant be horrified by our omnivorous diet? Or would the thinking plant regard our consumption of vegetables the same way most of us view consuming parts of animals—if it isn’t sapient, it’s okay to eat?

Remember Alice’s talking pudding? “It’s rude to eat people you’ve been introduced to.”

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Acquiring New Techniques Part 1: Pun Writing by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Acquiring New Techniques Part 1: Pun Writing 
by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Most people come by the ability to create puns naturally.

I never did.  Sometimes they just pop out of my mouth, but I can't do it on purpose, though I do admire those who spin them off.

You would think after so many years as a writer of fiction and non-fiction, there would be nothing left for me to learn.  Not so.  There are lots and lots of techniques I have never attempted. 

So when presented with a prime example of a technique I've never mastered, in a form that allows the bare bones of the technique to show through, and written by someone I'm communicating with on the social networks, I just can't resist trying to learn how it's done. 

So when I got caught up in reading the STEN SERIES, that I've discussed in some depth here because it represents a type of work there is a huge and growing market for, I just had to try to figure out how these jokes were constructed.

Here are some posts about Allan Cole, his career, why he's important to YOU as a writer of Romance, or Science Fiction Romance (you really wouldn't expect this material to be key to ROMANCE, but it is), and something you can learn about plotting from these novels.  In fact, you can learn a lot by studying the Sten Series about breaking "the rules" and getting away with it -- or ending up making a new rule other writers then must follow because it sells like crazy when you do!

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/01/career-management-for-writers-in.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/02/worldbuilding-from-reality-part-2.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-8-use-of-co.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-9-use-of-co.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-10-use-of.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/06/theme-character-integration-part-1-what.html

Remember the Sten Series is in collaboration with Chris Bunch and you should research him, too - famous for other works as well as screenplays.

I not only read the STEN SERIES just for the fun of it all, but I also studied it, trying to figure out why the Kilgour jokes became the subject of international conversation and a "claim to fame" of the Sten Series (8 novels, only a few strategically placed jokes, but it's the jokes that are remembered!).

I couldn't crack the secret of those jokes, though I could see exactly how they were used, how they were integrated into the characters, theme, setting, and yes, even the plot.  Fully integrated.

So I started talking to Allan Cole about how those jokes were created, and he kindly posted a few clues on the Facebook Group where he talks to fans:

http://www.facebook.com/groups/Alcole/ 

At one point he said offhandedly that the jokes had been written separately, then integrated into the novels.  They had created an inventory of jokes from which they carefully chose one to insert at the right point in whichever novel they were working on.

The Kilgour jokes are often sprinkled among action scenes, and finished off (or not)  after the climax of the action.  Kilgour just goes on and on telling these stories, and the boredom of it all, (plus the knowledge it will be a bad joke, or atrocious pun, a groan not a guffaw at the end) makes the other characters fend off the FINISH.

The other clue that Allan told me on Facebook, that I had not managed to figure out was that the connecting thread between the STORY that Kilgour was telling, the PLOT of the novel Kilgour was embroiled in at that time, and the PLIGHT of the reader who was stuck to the page unable to put the book down, was TRAPPED.

The theme was TRAPPED, and I couldn't see that. 

Once it was pointed out, how the character inside the Kilgour joke, the characters listening to Kilgour tell that story, and the reader, were all TRAPPED and sympathizing with the trapped characters in the Kilgour joke-story because they were trapped, I knew how to DO THIS.

A long time ago, I had learned the secret to joke writing was to create the punch-line first. 

So I gave myself the assignment to commit a Kilgour.

It took several weeks, but a punch-line finally occurred to me complete with a final-scene to the story. 

Several days later, I told myself not to be a coward and just boldly leap into telling a story of some sort.  I opened a notepad file and plunged in holding that punchline in mind, and trying to think like Kilgour trapped in an untenable and unwinnable situation by an interminable military action sequence (the military hurry-up-and-wait nerve-breaking-stress situations that are the hallmark of action stories.)

So I trapped my imaginary Kilgour in a space ship full of civilians and waited to see how he'd break the tension of their being trapped.  (think TSA). 

I couldn't do Kilgour's Scottish accent -- which in the novels is spelled out with every syllable he speaks.  Normally, editors disallow spelling-out accents, but in these novels the writers get away with it because it is done correctly.  You can't "copy" this stuff and just transcribe your characters opaque accents.  There are techniques to learn there that I do not have mastery of!

So I just wrote the tale in plain English, trying for the "trapped" effect.

I consider it partially successful because I do think I got the "trapped" effect central to the Kilgour style, but it's not hilarious enough, and I didn't even pick up the rhythm of Kilgour's characteristic speech pattern, never mind spelling out his accent. 

It took a lot of courage to submit it to Allan Cole.  But eventually I confessed that I'd committed a Kilgour and asked if he wanted to see it.  He said yes, so I sent it while mentally cataloging all its short-comings.

Allan Cole liked it enough to add a note at the top -- in Kilgour's accent -- indicating this was a translation, and include it in EMPIRE DAY this year (it's an annual celebration and you can contribute fanfic to these anthologies, too).  Empire Day is  a holiday celebrated in the novels and now on Facebook.

You can get this compendium on Amazon - borrow it free.  Or as an e-book.

This is edited by Allan Cole and contains my first ever attempt at writing a joke.

http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Day-2013-ebook/dp/B00CAY3DQW/

(see his IMDB filmography here: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0170426/ ). 

Allan Cole is the writer of over 200 produced screenplays plus many novels.  This anthology is based on the STEN SERIES which Allan Cole wrote with Chris Bunch (look him up on amazon, and imdb, too).  The International Best Selling Sten Series (8 novels) is now in e-book, and this anthology was just published containing items written by other writers and fans.   

For those following this writing craft blog, the point of studying my Kilgour joke attempt is to compare it with the published Kilgour jokes in the novels, and see how to teach yourself a complex, multi-leveled technique one step at a time. 

Don't hold back from marketing until you think what you've produced is perfect.  Just try for one technique, focus on it and practice it.  Later, add other techniques. 


Here's part of the instruction Allan Cole provided on joke writing:
http://www.facebook.com/groups/Alcole/permalink/459154630821452/ 


The other element of acquiring a technique, any writing technique not just joke writing, is just what I've demonstrated here with this Kilgour joke.  Take an example of the technique that intrigues you, is well done, but allows you to see the mechanism that makes it work, and copy it.  Yes, fanfic!  Yes, write in some other writer's universe (but remember the line between what belongs to you and what does not!).  Even if you bury it in a bottom drawer or burn it in the BBQ, write it.  Just write it. 

If you have to learn to pat your head, rub your tummy, walk and chew gum too, first just pat your head!  Just that much, all by itself alone.  In this case, I was after TRAPPED, and I trapped it.  There's a couple dozen other subtle techniques amalgamated into the Kilgour joke style that I have to choose from if I ever try this again, so if I do it, I'll do trapped+something, and then trapped+something+something else, and onward until I finally replicate Kilgour.  But since Kilgour is unique in the annals of literature, I would start by finding some other thematic element than "trapped" and creating a character who resorts to comic relief from scratch, using that theme which would fit into my own stories.

Pick out your own next technique challenge and find one element to practice in isolation.  We will no doubt return to the topic of skills acquisition methods later. 

posted by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com