Thursday, December 05, 2013

Darkover 36

This past weekend marked the official final year of Darkover Grand Council, informally known as DarkoverCon. Because of the death of its founder, Jaelle of Armida (Judy Gerjuoy), the Darkover name can no longer be used. Next year, a new convention incorporating the best of the old, ChessieCon, will be inaugurated at the same place and date.

Sadly, it will have to go on without one of Darkover’s major attractions, the folk and filk group Clam Chowder. At this year’s con they played their farewell concert. Saturday night of Thanksgiving weekend will never be quite the same without “Bend Over, Greek Sailor.” For an explanation, see here:

Clam Chowder: Bend Over, Greek Sailor

On the plus side, ChessieCon plans to reinstitute the costume contest, dropped from Darkover several years ago because of declining participation.

This convention included a lively panel on the Sime-Gen universe. Wish you could have been there, Jacqueline! I appeared on four panels: “Werewolves vs. Vampires,” “Children of the Night: What Music They Make” (about wolves and werewolves), “The Romance Invasion” (about romance in speculative fiction), and “Sudden Changes: Sime-Gen, Werewolves, Changelings, and Love Bites” (come to think of it, we never got around to discussing changelings). I also participated in the rapid fire reading presented by Broad Universe, an organization that promotes the work of female speculative fiction writers; that’s a session in which each author reads a short snippet of five or ten minutes.

Broad Universe

One great attraction of this con for me is that it’s small enough to feel relaxed and intimate, yet just big enough that there are several tracks with enough topics and activities to choose from so there’s always something to do. I wish I could fit in more of the Steampunk track, since some of their topics sound quite intriguing. (I would have loved to attend the presentation on Victorian spiritualism if there hadn’t been an unavoidable conflict at that hour.) And their costumes are fun to look at. I also rejoice in the fact that there’s a full track of music programming, another feature I don’t get to sample as much of as I’d probably enjoy.

If you like cozy cons that are very book-focused and writer-oriented, try to make it to ChessieCon in some future year. Date, Thanksgiving weekend; place, just north of Baltimore.

ChessieCon

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Tuesday, December 03, 2013

Reviews 3 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Finding Your "Voice"

Reviews 3 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Finding Your "Voice"


Previous posts in this series:

Here is the index of previous posts relevant to this discussion:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/index-post-to-art-and-craft-of-story.html

In Part 3 of this series on episodic plotting and story springboards,
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/story-springboards-part-3-art-of.html

we started sketching out the issues and topics relevant to constructing an Episodic Plot.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/story-springboards-part-4-art-of.html

In this "reviews" series we're exploring places you can find examples of what we are discussing:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/reviews-1-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/reviews-2-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

So here we are in the middle of Chanukah, a time of re-dedication, renewal -- what's called in the Comics world "An Origin Story."

This time of year is about beginnings, more than endings.

Marion Zimmer Bradley taught the oldest truth of storytelling -- "Every Ending Is A New Beginning."

Back in the Fall when I watched the first episode of the new ABC drama "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." -- I noticed how it used that line - the Origin Story - as what SAVE THE CAT! by Blake Snyder terms, "theme stated." 

Theme-stated is a line of dialogue that shows without telling the philosophical core question the work deals with, and states the question in such a way that you can "hear" the Author's Voice and know what the work is really about, regardless of what it is ostensibly about.

THEME-STATED is all about "Voice."

"Voice" is one of those elusive subjects new writers natter on about, obsess over, and just can't quite get a grip on.  It's like "style" - an intangible that can't really be taught or even learned, but must be discovered by the writer herself.

So the opening episode of this new TV drama (composed of characters and material that has been market tested in comics, film, and other media) told the "origin" of a new series.

The script provided the opening "beat" (to use another SAVE THE CAT! term) of the new series, hinting at a long series of episodes.

In November, we began an exploration of the necessary elements to construct an episodic story.  We looked at some previous posts on story-mechanics then began peeling away the masks of the element called "Springboard" (a term borrowed from TV Screenwriter's Marketing).

Story-Springboards are the mechanism that makes episodic structures work, that make Movie Serials (Flash Gordon) work, that make TV Series work, and yes, comics and novel-series too.

The elements of a series of novels are all present in, but invisible during, the first novel or episode. The universe the story will explore has to be in that first "hook" -- yes, even inside the first line of the first episode.

From there it "unfolds."

Note how the AGENT TV series opens with a guy and his kid looking into the window of a very geekish comic store with action figures -- a few lines of dialogue set up the subject of the theme (family relationships, a well-raised kid who doesn't throw a "Daddy-buy-me-that!" temper tantrum while knowing his Dad is "out of work.") The "universe" of this series is in that store window. 

Just as that quick set-up scene is in progress BOOM, an explosion high up in a building behind them -- and we do not know that the Dad has had business on the upper floor of that building. 

We just watch the Dad check to see the kid didn't get hit by debris, then TRUST the kid to stay put, and the Dad rushes across the street toward the fire while everyone else is fleeing. 

Then the Dad looks this way and that (like Superman about to change clothes and fly up from an alley -- really well acted!  My Geek-nerves thrilled no end!) drives his bare hands into the bricks of the building and climbs up into the fire.  He flinches from the flames, races into the burning room, and jumps out of a high window holding a woman draped over his extended arms.

That's an important visual -- he is NOT holding her in a "fireman's  carry" over his shoulders as he should be, but in the Superman/Lois Lane rescue position depicted on comic book covers.  It's also the position favored by Pulp Fiction covers with aliens kidnapping helpless human women (nobody explains why) and the position used by human Hero rescuing helpless human woman.

It's stupid and dangerous, but seems to be the "image" that telegraphs "strength" -- more strength and confidence than is necessary or wise.

The show progresses through explaining and demonstrating the modern tech (complete with James Bond allusions!  -- I'm gonna love this show!  It's a scream and a laugh between every commercial!) -- and ends with the inevitable showdown scene.

In that ending scene we get the REST OF THE THEME STATED ("voice" remember?).

Up until this final-showdown scene with an impending explosion that could take out half a city, (talk about the cliche stage-writing-trick of putting a "bomb under the chair.") we aren't really sure who are the "good guys" and who are the "bad guys" and whether this new guy belongs on the good-guy's roster.

Oh, yeah, you know because you know the universe and who owns the franchise, who wrote and produced -- I mean who hasn't been following all this on Google+ and Facebook? -- but the innocent audience hasn't been shown, so they are on the edge of their chairs wondering if they're going to like this new TV Series or not.

So we're in the showdown scene at the end of ep 1, and we learn that this building-climbing guy has a chemical in his system that will cause what amounts to an atomic explosion that could take out half a city.

This fellow, whom we met in scene 1 got fired from a low-level job because he got injured, found a doctor who was running an experiment (for an unknown nasty), got implanted with this material that will explode (just like the previous experimental subject exploded in scene 1 and took out a building top laboratory), and became a "super-hero" with a "crazy-streak" that is breaking out now.  So his inner resentments have been heated up artificially, and he is raging mad at the injustice of it all. 

Our sympathies are with this guy.,  This guy saved-the-cat by promising his kid, in scene 1, that they'd see what they could do for his birthday present, then rescued a woman from a fire!  This script is pure SAVE THE CAT! writing.  

But the SHIELD team that is supposed to be our "good guys" have decided they have to take this guy out (with a shot to the head) to save a good chunk of the city from annihilation.  (The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one, as Spock said.)

So the head of this SHIELD team is talking to the new guy while the marksman on the team is targeting the new guy's head.

The new guy gets dialogue lines that -- in lean, spare, precise, perfect dialogue! -- state one side of the political argument going on in America today, that will be the main subject of the elections of 2014. 

And right out loud, on TV, the new guy mentions GOD!!!  The source of his moral/ethical stance (which we've just seen him violating) is God.  Yet he states his resentment of the "Suits" -- the big money, ruling class, people who hire, destroy, and discard "workers" as he has been discarded -- he clearly states which "side" he's on -- what we recognize as the Good Guy Side.  Yet, just as clearly, he is not sane at that moment.  The team leader states that this new guy has expressed the philosophy that indicates he is just exactly the sort of person who should be on his team.

At that point the part of the audience which is clueless is deciding if they want to watch this show or not.

They are listening for the VOICE of the producer, but they don't know that's what they need to hear. 

They want to know what this series will be "about."

What the show is about is inside the timbre of the "Voice" of the producer, and it comes through clearly in the last few moments after all the suspenseful buildup.

The marksman makes his shot -- something is embedded in the new guy's skull, and he falls motionless.  (No blood.)

The audience sees the group they thought were the good guys apparently murder a good guy whom they liked.

Spirits plummet.  This is not a show for me.  These people are BAD, and not in a good way at all.  Yuck.


Last scene -- it is made clear that the new guy will survive and be OK.

And in that survival is the VOICE OF THE PRODUCER and the SPRINGBOARD for the series.

The "voice" is within the THEME STATED (this sub-set of that larger theme says "good guys don't murder good guys"), and the "springboard" is wound tight.  The viewers are ready to tune in next week (or DVR next week's show).  This set of Good Guys and their bags full of techie magic tricks captivate because they are "interesting."  They are "interesting" because they take risks and win -- which creates the suspense-line "what if they don't win?" 

As with The Dresden Files (long book series by Jim Butcher - 16 and counting)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bookseries/B00CKCWAEA/

... we have a classic character with 6 problems but in this case represented by the 6 members of the team.

This is from ABC's website: http://abc.go.com/shows/marvels-agents-of-shield/about-the-show

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

Clark Gregg reprises his role of Agent Phil Coulson from Marvel’s feature films, as he assembles a small, highly select group of Agents from the worldwide law-enforcement organization known as S.H.I.E.L.D. Together they investigate the new, the strange, and the unknown across the globe, protecting the ordinary from the extraordinary. Coulson's team consists of Agent Grant Ward (Brett Dalton), highly trained in combat and espionage; Agent Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen), expert pilot and martial artist; Agent Leo Fitz (Iain De Caestecker), brilliant engineer; and Agent Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge), genius bio-chemist. Joining them on their journey into mystery is new recruit and computer hacker, Skye (Chloe Bennet).

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Marvel’s first television series, is from executive producers Joss Whedon (Marvel's The Avengers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Jed Whedon & Maurissa Tancharoen, who co-wrote the pilot (Dollhouse, Dr.Horrible's Sing-Along Blog). Jeffrey Bell (Angel, Alias) and Jeph Loeb (Smallville, Lost, Heroes) also serve as executive producers. Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is produced by ABC Studios and Marvel Television.

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

The nature of a character's character and the intricacies of the 6 problems (in this case the relationships among the 6 and the external problems they face together) are two of the essential elements in forming the "springboard."

The "springboard" has to be a "board" (character) that can BEND or DEFORM, and be made of a substance (such as a belief in God, or a disbelief, a cause, a dedication, a trusting relationship) that has the "potential energy" to make that deformed board SPRING back and hurl the character into a NEW LIFE. 

In this case, each of the six being assembled into a team are leaving what they had to become something new.

Every ending is a new beginning.

That in itself is a theme which is a component of larger themes.

The trick to understanding how theme becomes VOICE is to understand that theme is "what your story says" and that what your story says is very likely not what you set out to say, what you read it to say, what it seems to say to you. 

In fact, what your story really says is very likely not even what most of your readers think it says.

Worse -- not even academics or reviewers always nail the theme of a story.

But academics who study the whole body of a writer's work often do uncover a common thread among those works.  Sometimes they divide an author's work into "periods" -- sets of works that share something in common, and an appeal to specific audiences that are different from one another.

Authors, like people, grow and over a lifetime change, evolve different philosophical takes on the world and the meaning of life, as well as increasing skill producing text that reflects that meaning.

Every ending is a new beginning -- and as Gene Roddenberry taught, the purpose of fiction is to ASK QUESTIONS but not provide "answers." 

Themes frame those questions and begin explorations of all the related questions.

Now study up on SOUND -- and how digital sound analysis can "recognize" voices.

That's what a reader "hears" in the themes, sub-themes, and various "notes" present in the voices of the characters in a story.  It's a whole symphony of thematic-sounds -- of tones and pitches.

Every subject about human life has thousands of tones, just like "white-noise." 

The story-teller's job is to make "music" out of the "white-noise" of life by sorting tones out of the background and putting them together into something that harmonizes -- like the "voices" of the instruments of a symphony orchestra.

But the "quality" of an instrument or an orchestra lies in the "resonances" the playing of an instrument produces.  The violin you rent to give your kid his first lesson is not the same as the violin played by the lead violinist of the Philadelphia Philharmonic.

The difference in those instruments lies in the resonances of the wood and glues.

Each hand-made violin has a "voice" composed of such resonances.

Each writer has a "voice" composed of the resonances aroused within the author by handling the themes of life composing the story being told.  Note how a trained singer's voice differs from that of a person who has not exercised vocal chords and trained voice and ear.  Note the Drill Sergeant's Parade Ground voice is loud -- how does that happen?  It's not just innate -- it's training, practice, exercise, and technique. 

"Voice" is not just the strings or the bow, the touch of the violinist, the composition of the piece, the acoustics of the Hall (or recording studio), or the recording technology.

"Voice" is all of that and more.

For a work of fiction, "voice" is not any one of the craft techniques we've been studying in this blog.  It is the connections (glue) between those components, the parts of the writer's character as a person that the writer herself is not aware of -- that's the part that vibrates and produces an induced vibration in the reader.

The reader "hears" the vibration of their own body/soul combination -- not the writer's vibration! 

The "voice" the writer speaks in is not the "voice" the reader hears.

We say, as we grow up, that we've "out-grown" a particular genre or type of story.

Writers too out-grow their first stories and evolve a new voice. 

With music, as we age, our "ear" may lose acuity in certain tonal ranges.

With reading, (or TV etc) our ability to respond to certain "springboards" vibrating as they toss a character into story may change. 

As I've quoted Alma Hill saying, "Writing is a Performing Art." 

The stage upon which the writer performs is theme, which is composed of many "boards" and "nails" -- and may be hollow underneath and echo, or have trapdoors for magic tricks. 

Stages can be simple (a soapbox) or complex.  The only way to develop a "voice" is to stand up on the stage and perform just as a singer must sing to strengthen the voice's muscles. 

Here are some previous posts on THEME.

Here are 7 parts:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html

And with links to parts 8, 9 and 10:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/07/theme-plot-integration-part-12-tom.html

We've also been examining the integration of theme into other fundamental components of storytelling such as character:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/theme-character-integration-part-3-why.html

Until I have enough on a subject to post an Index, I generally list previous parts of a discussion at the top of a post -- and include links to other related subjects within a post, but often rely upon you to remember parts of a discussion.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Sunday, December 01, 2013

What's WIPO And Why Should Writers Care?


WIPO is the World Intellectual Property Organization.

Writers ought to care because copyright is the only legal protection that writers have to ensure that writers are able to profit from their time, expertise, and creativity.

WIPO defines "Intellectual Property" thus:

Intellectual property (IP) refers to creations of the mind, such as inventions; literary and artistic works; designs; and symbols, names and images used in commerce.
IP is protected in law by, for example, patentscopyright and trademarks, which enable people to earn recognition or financial benefit from what they invent or create. By striking the right balance between the interests of innovators and the wider public interest, the IP system aims to foster an environment in which creativity and innovation can flourish.

You can check out its resources on copyright here: http://www.wipo.int/copyright/en/

There are many free reports including "

which can be downloaded using this url, or directly from the WIPO site by searching for 893.
http://www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/freepublications/en/copyright/893/wipo_pub_893.pdf 

In my view, Report 893 gives the lie to self-serving assertions --made by people who profit or benefit from piracy-- that content posted on the internet "should be free" and that writers, photographers, musicians, actors, artists and others should give away their intellectual property (free), allow others to monetize the creators' intellectual property without compensating the creators, and that the creators should find other ways to make a living.

 "In the global economy, copyright protection creates the basis for entire industries such as those for music, publishing, film, broadcasting and software, and affects as well many other business activities. Thus copyright is a powerful source of economic growth, creating jobs and stimulating trade."
The Guide is quite lengthy, but it sets out to establish a methodology for assessing the financial impact of copyright (the contribution to the GDP) and of copyright-protected individuals and businesses.

"80. A number of conditions need to be met in order for copyright to perform its properfunctions. Among those particular attention should be paid to appropriate monitoring andcontrolling misuse by consumers as well as the existence of appropriate valuation ofcopyright, which has to balance the true cost of production and efficient protection."
And
"...creators must be sufficiently compensated, or they will find another employment...."
And
"If the intellectual property is not protected it will be easily reproduced and some other delivery media will compete with the original on the market. This will undermine the profits and could imply insufficient compensation for the creator. Under a system of legal protection the marginal cost of reproduction will be increased and the market price will not fall so far as when originals and copies compete and creators can thus enjoy compensation.45" 
I am grateful to Joseph Harris for drawing my attention to the WIPO site and the free Guide, and also for his excerpts, some of which I have used as a matter of convenience instead of taking the trouble on my own to cut and paste them from the free .pdf.

Rowena Cherry

Credit:  Joseph Harris, author/publisher, S P Publications, jcrharris.com

Joseph Harris is completing a number of books, the first of which he hopes to publish before the year is out [Crimes and Ciminals of Old series], as well as a historical revision biography and othe longer works. He will also republish books not currently available; all initially ebooks. His website is visitable but not yet pretty! After service in the Royal Air Force his career spanned financial and related  journalism, horticulture and negotiating, with  few byways. His interests and writings range from humorous poetry to economics to people and politics; and he is devloping a "New Reform" political philosophy. 


All the best,
Rowena Cherry

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/ 

Thursday, November 28, 2013

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy (U.S.) Thanksgiving!

As usual, we’ll be attending Darkover Grand Council north of Baltimore on Thanksgiving weekend. Sadly, the long-time organizer and chair died this year, so this will be the last official DarkoverCon. The committee plans to continue it next year under a new name, ChessieCon. This year, though, one of the con’s biggest attractions, the folk band Clam Chowder, will present its farewell concert. We’ll miss them a lot.

One of the panels I’m scheduled for discusses “Werewolves vs. Vampires.” Why do so many books and movies show werewolves and vampires as hereditary enemies? I’ve seen a few in which the werewolf serves as the vampire’s ally or henchman, which seems to me just as reasonable, but that relationship doesn't appear so often. Shouldn’t it be natural for the two “species” to cooperate? The vampire drinks blood and doesn’t necessarily have to kill every time she feeds. After she finishes with a victim (unless she’s a “good” vampire who won’t let her donors be harmed), the werewolf can eat the flesh (unless he’s an ethical lycanthrope who hunts only animals, in which case he’d have even less reason for rivalry with vampires).

Friends or foes, however, the class hierarchy never seems to change. In monster society, vampires tend to be portrayed as aristocrats, and werewolves, in keeping with their beast nature, as low-class brutes. If anybody has ideas to offer about vampires vs. werewolves, I’d love to read them.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Reviews 2 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg - Page-turners To Study

Reviews 2 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Page-turners To Study

Reviews 1 (not really the first reviews I've done on this blog!) is here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/reviews-1-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

This series of "Reviews" is about books you can study and learn from.

Here are three innocent looking books, but they are anything but innocent.

Each is a 2013 entry in a long running series of novels guilty of being page-turners.  Each one is a complete novel in and of itself, a whole story.  Each one is an "episode" in a longer story arc -- as we've been studying episodic structure and the use of "Interesting" to achieve that structure.  Each one is a page-turner.  Each of these authors has hit the rhythm the current publishing establishment needs to make a profit.

Gini Koch's ALIEN series is Fantasy Romance with the structure of military science fiction -- that good, old fashioned, traditional military-action-formula stuff that has sold well for maybe more than a hundred years.  But Gini is doing it as Romance!

Judging by the vigorous market for very simple shoot-from-the-hip video games, COMBAT based stories are still popular.  Every generation becomes enamored of "winning" in a combat situation -- just being faster, stronger, more skilled than the opposition is every teen's goal in life (for a while, at least).

So there's always a market for stories about vanquishing foes by blasting them to bits.

The same is true of Romance genre.  There's always a market for stories about "dazzlers" (a term Gini Koch uses in her ALIEN Series to good advantage) when you (the writer) can bring the reader into the character of a dazzler whose power over men is devastating. Making the reader feel what it's like to have such power over others is the same as making the reader feel what it's like to have the power to blow adversaries to bits.

Here is the Gini Koch page on Amazon, though I rather imagine readers of this blog have not missed a single one of the Alien novels:

http://www.amazon.com/Gini-Koch/e/B004HH6J6G/

Touched By An Alien, Alien Tango, Alien In The Family, Alien Proliferation, Alien Diplomacy, Alien vs. Alien, Alien In The House and in December 2013, Alien Research are the ALIEN SERIES titles.

This is the series that connects these other two series of Military Science Fiction/Fantasy. 

Note, that I have told Gini Koch several times that the ALIEN novels need to be line-edited to soak about 20% of the words out -- a couple of reviewers have noted that, though often readers just don't know WHY they have a hard time "following" a story or remembering the huge list of characters as they pop up, then vanish from the pages.

That difficulty is often from a lack of vigorous line editing rather than an innate structural problem. 

The story Koch is telling in the ALIEN series is complex, far-flung, passion-driven (what will a heroic type person do for the sake of maintaining a love-life?), and crazy-funny all at the same time. 

What constitutes "Interesting?"

It is possible to review the ALIEN novels in a dozen different contexts, illustrating many story-telling techniques that are all highly marketable (other than being just plain fun to read) -- but today we are continuing the discussion launched over the last couple of weeks involving the subject of what, exactly, constitutes "interesting?"

Here is the index of previous posts relevant to this discussion of writing a Page-turner:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/index-post-to-art-and-craft-of-story.html

In Part 3 of this series on story-springboards,

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

...we started sketching out the issues and topics relevant to constructing an Episodic Plot, one of which is a "springboard" with enough potential energy to hurl the story and plot all the way to The End.

In Part 4 we analyzed "boring" - where it comes from and how it happens.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/story-springboards-part-4-art-of.html

Now we're looking at what makes a reader turn the page -- want to know "what happens next" -- or be eager to pick up a book they had to put aside because it's long, like the ALIEN SERIES novels are.

What makes a reader buy a sequel?

Well, each reader is different, and a given reader changes taste over the years.  But there is a one-word answer from the point of view of a writer -- "suspense." 

Soap Opera structure -- the episodic structure is best exemplified by the old-fashioned soaps - is generally considered to work well with suspense because the 'characters are interesting' -- watching a Soap even after missing a few episodes is a "visit with old friends." 

The suspense element can be "what will this old friend do about this new problem?" or it can be just, "what's going on with this old friend now?"  Either way, it's "what happens next to my old friend?" 

Life, in general, is all about "what happens next." 

There are two main categories of "happens next."
A) the consequences of what was done before (Saturn)
B) a NEW Event that blindsides the characters and changes everything (Uranus).

Remember, in the vocabulary we've adopted for this blog, "Plot" is the series of Events; "Story" is the meaning of those Events to the characters. 

You will find these two structural elements referred to by various terms elsewhere, but every professional writer knows the structural function of these two elements and - consciously or unconsciously - knows how to weld them together using Theme as the glue. It doesn't matter what you call them.  You just have to know how to work with them. 

Genres are distinguished to some extent by which element dominates - which element has the most words devoted to it, STORY or PLOT.

In the "Action" genres (Fantasy or Science Fiction, Men's action, war stories), Plot is supposed to dominate.

In Romance, Story dominates.

Thus in Romance genre, many long paragraphs between lines of dialogue are there to detail the emotional motivations slowly developing into the next utterance.

In Action genres, many long paragraphs are between lines of dialogue to detail the moves and counter-moves, the narrative of what the characters did to deliver which blows to the opponent.

In Romance, the plot is carried on the story.

In Action, the story is carried on the plot.


When Story and Plot are about equally balanced, each explicating the same Theme, each progressing in a smooth dance rhythm (what editors call "pacing."), you get the broadest audience appeal.  Half the audience will be frustrated there isn't more story, the other half will be frustrated there isn't more plot, and neither half will be so frustrated they stop reading. 

The best way to learn to balance Story and Plot in your writing is to practice doing one without the other -- like "Dancing With The Stars" it does take practice.

But you won't get it just exactly right on first or sometimes third draft.  It takes editing, right down to the minute the novel goes to press, to get the balance correct for the intended audience.

Gini Koch has nailed the "pacing" of the overall novel -- the beginning is in the right place in Plot and Story, the Plot and Story start of on the correct foot, mirroring each other like dance partners on Dancing With the Stars, the quarter point turn is right where it should be, the middle is smack in the middle, the 3/4 turn into the final action is on the nose, and the ending rises to a massive climax spectacle, then glides to rest -- with a few loose ends trailing to suggest the sequel as an episodic series should.

Take any one of the ALIEN novels and find the page numbers for those turning points, write down what happens at those points, read the whole novel, then graph plot and story and see what you find.

So if you wanted to improve the reader experience for the ALIEN novels, you would have to line and word-cut, trim, rephrase sentences, condense -- painstaking, and time-consuming (thus expensive) work.  And you'd have to cut enough so that there was room to add reminders about "who" each of the characters is when they pop up again.

Would it be worth it?  Would you lose some of the humorous banter that fans love about Koch's writing?  Yes, you would lose some readers that way -- would you gain more?  I doubt it. 

Now look at the two other long-running series in the photo above, The Destroyermen by Taylor Anderson and The Lost Stars by Jack Campbell.

These are essentially Combat Strategy Novels -- more about maneuvering fleets, resources, playing politics and diplomacy as forms of combat, deploying fire-power of every sort from explosions to one-upsmanship surprises. 

The Lost Stars is a spinoff series from Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet series - same universe, but subordinate characters become the main characters.

The Destroyermen is more of a Fantasy type Science Fiction series.  Some World War II Navy ships get sucked into an alternate universe Earth where evolution took some different turns, producing aliens of various sorts on various continents.  These Destroyer crew people from our world are Americans of the "Can Do" generation who land in the midst of a very confusing multi-cultural world-war situation -- and basically change that world by introducing technology and tactics. 

STORM SURGE is the 8th book in a series.  It's hardcover from RoC, and has gained great praise for a reason.  It's a page turner! 

But like Gini Koch's series, the cast of characters is vast and hard to remember. 

Unlike Gini's series, though, DESTROYERMEN has resorted to following different characters into different theaters of conflict -- and only by reading very fast do you see the overall tactical situation.  The strategies though are lost in a shimmering fog.

There is, however, one driving objective -- each set of characters has the objective of getting out of this shooting war alive. 

They do not spend any paragraphs thinking or dreaming about the perfect life they want to create on this strange Earth.  They form war-buddy relationships, but don't get a lot deeper than that.  To them, the most important thing in life is not the fulfillment of a deeply satisfying Relationship with the Soul Mate who completes them.  The most important thing in life is LIFE -- i.e. staying alive long enough to take the next breath.

The second most important thing in life to these lost Americans (and there are some Japanese warship survivors who allied with the "other side" on this alter-Earth), is doing "the right thing."  Even when living like "drunken sailors" they strive for a solid moral footing.  They have Honor, and won't sell that just to survive.

The oddly non-1940's element is that these Americans unquestioningly accept the non-human allies with all their cultural quirks.  There's little of the prejudices that shaped those decades in the USA. 

So, yes, it's Fantasy, but with all the elements of Science Fiction.  These Americans offhandedly re-engineer, re-invent, and originate technology -- and while they're at it, they teach non-humans how to create  technological innovations.  By Book 8, Storm Surge, the non-humans are the primary source of innovations -- new aircraft, new torpedoes, new ways to create and deliver explosions, and of communicating over long distances.  Meanwhile, the majority non-humans adopt 1940's slang English. 

Along the way, you learn enough about the characters (human and not) to be rooting for these folks and against those folks -- you want to know "what happens next" because the action never pauses, even during the tense waits while forces and fleets reposition.

To find the secrets of the "page turner" of episodic structure, check the Events (plot developments) at the beginning, quarter, middle, 3/4 and end points in each volume.  Each volume has a complete story, but leaves over some "loose ends," for the next part of the story.  You can learn more about page-turner structure from books you do not like than you can from books you do like because, without the glamor of an enchanting novel to suck you in, you can see through the surface to the mechanism below. 

If Taylor Anderson gets to finish the DESTROYERMEN series, I suspect it will be the entire story of World War II in all its theaters.  The canvass is vast -- as is the multi-planet canvass that Gini Koch is painting her love story against.

Taylor Anderson seems to be telling a story of Honor using a plot of Technology.

Gini Koch seems to be telling a story of Romance using a plot of Family Dynamics.
http://www.amazon.com/Gini-Koch/e/B004HH6J6G/

Which brings us to Jack Campbell in a far-far-far future Interstellar War.

http://www.amazon.com/Jack-Campbell/e/B001H6W4PU/

Campbell builds fleets of interstellar combat vessels -- of various sizes and purposes just as a sea-going fleet of today is composed of various sorts of vessels.  Then he pits them against each other, each driving toward a specific strategic goal.

Campbell's far-flung canvas is stitched together with 2 kinds of "wormhole" transportation gates -- one natural, scattered among various star systems, and the other constructed in strategic locations to facilitate the war, and trade.  The constructed gates are "gifts" from the mysterious aliens, which the main hero of Lost Fleet discovers are really weapons to destroy humanity. 

Attacking, defending, and using these natural and artificial "gates" is the main plot dynamic. 

Most of the words of the The Lost Fleet series are devoted to maneuvering through or around these gates, and out-foxing a rival Fleet for control or access to a gate.

Most of the words of The Lost Stars series is devoted to exactly the same sort of maneuvering, but via politics more than spaceships.  In The Lost Stars, one star-system decides to secede from one of the star empires and declare independence.  That's not working too well, so they start trying to create allies among their nearer neighbors. 

Taken together both series paint on an even larger canvas than Koch or Anderson use -- because here we have a Game of "Let's You and Him Fight" -- where an alien species is manipulating Humanity into a centuries-long war, human against human.  There are a couple other alien species just discovered, but we don't know yet if the first aliens have conquered them, or what kind of allies they might make to humans.

So Campbell's canvas shows a Humanity Divided sitting in the midst of a giant sea of Hostile Unknowns, and one Hero from humanity's past awakened from cold sleep with a way of thinking alien to "modern" humanity.

Both Jack Campbell series, Lost Fleet and Lost Stars, are First Contact stories carried on a Plot of Strategies and Tactics of Warfare.

Campbell takes more time to go into the intricacies of Relationship, develop smoldering love stories that show every sign of developing into full fledged Romances, and to reveal the depths of human psychology that form the platform of warfare.

Now you may be wondering why this blog is focusing on Military Science Fiction when the ostensible subject here is Romance.

Consider Sex and Violence, and their relationship to each other within the Human Psyche -- the origin and nature of what is "interesting" to a reader, and what exactly a writer does when creating the "climax structure" of a novel.

And there is the larger question of whether sexuality has anything at all to do with Romance.

These 3 novels series, taken together, provide a context for exploring the relationships among these abstract components of human nature.

If you decide you don't want to read Jack Campbell or Taylor Anderson -- try Mike Shepherd's Kris Longknife series.  It's fabricated of the same material, and has a terrific love story thread. 

Mike Shepherd
http://www.amazon.com/Mike-Shepherd/e/B001H6N2II/

We will return to this subject, and very likely use off-hand references to these novels with the assumption you are acquainted with them.  Even if you don't read them all, every single word, do take a look at the Amazon pages and figure out what about them is "interesting" to the people who like them.  At the same time, study what it is about them that seems so very "boring" to you.

Check the author's pages on Amazon and note especially the "Customers Also Bought Items By" section on the right. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Copyright: Those who speak to Congress, speak for themselves.


This week, I respectfully present a round-up of a few discussions of copyright issues around the internet that interest this author.

Most Upsetting (to me)
" .... speakers emphasized education and voluntary cooperation over legislation, even as they acknowledged that voluntary efforts by search engines–a chief gateway to pirated works–had not been effective."

http://www.authorsguild.org/general/no-sopa-speakers-downplay-legislation-at-house-online-piracy-hearing/

Who were the "speakers"? One was John McCoskey, executive VP and CTO of the Motion Picture Association of America.

Allegedly, he said that  "the bad actors were not the search engines but the pirate sites."
That may be the view of the MPAA, but it does not represent the views or experience of many musicians and authors whom I follow.

On the internet, the key to piracy is to follow the money, in this author's opinion. The search engines encourage the creation of pirate sites by making pirate sites profitable. If the search engines were barred by law from also placing paid advertisements on pirate sites and thereby profiting from piracy and making piracy profitable, the search engines might escape blame.

The High Cost of Free (Music)
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/the-high-cost-of-free/Content?oid=3762154
In this article, journalist Kathleen Richards discusses a documentary "Unsound" about how piracy has affected a sampling of musicians.

When she writes, "It's a topic that threatens their livelihoods, yet few have talked about it publicly, because those who have have been criticized and ostracized by the fans they rely on to make a living...." she could equally well be writing about authors.

Cyber-bullying and intimidation are rife when people who don't mind paying for expensive equipment, and for softward to protect "their freedom", become abusive when anyone dares to suggest that the creator of the entertaining content ought to be paid.

However, the comments on this article are mostly by musicians, for musicians, and well worth reading. The coarse and abusive remarks by the pirates and bullies have been removed.

Not so, with the next interesting article on piracy!

Too Many Americans Think Piracy Is Okay.
http://www.thewrap.com/congresswoman-judy-chu-many-americans-think-piracy-okay/
Kudos to Congresswoman Judy Chu for speaking out. Brickbats to the lowlifes who make racist comments about Congresswoman Chu, and vulgar comments about the unfortunate perspective taken by the photographer.

An absolutely typical piratical argument follows these lines quoted in part from one commenter:
"consider the fact that most of us won't have a shred of pity for these billionaire corporations whose members have private islands for themselves while we have to struggle to pay rent. Everyone else in the industry will be completely fine despite piracy. Movies are making more money than ever right now so none of these set-technicians or caterers or whatever will be negatively effected.(sic) Ms. Chu can **** right off."
 
Note the assumptions:
1) All copyright owners are billionaire corporations.
2) Copyright owners own private islands.
3) Income inequality is not fair/People who are not billionaires are justified in pirating.
4) Piracy doesn't hurt anyone at all who works in the entertainment industry.
5) Caterers and set-technicians will not be hurt by piracy.

Finally, whoever JemJem is, one has to admire the succinctness and wit of his/her comment on a hostile Authors' Guild discussion about Judge Denny Chin's volte face on the Google Book Scanning saga.

" Our rights to what's yours supersedes your rights to what's yours."

Apparently, the end justifies the means in Denny Chin's courtroom, and it is not copyright infringement if one scans an entire copyrighted work without permission or compensation as long as one only displays (and makes money from) the parts of the work that people want to read.

Does this open the door to an unauthorized anthology of the world's greatest sex scenes? Would that be transformative?

Opting-in would have made so much more sense, and been so much fairer.

All the best,
Rowena Cherry
SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/ 

Friday, November 22, 2013

11-22-63

Not only is today the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination, but on this same day in 1963 two other great men of the 20th century died, Aldous Huxley and C. S. Lewis. When I heard about Kennedy's death, I was in a high school class (I don't remember which one), and the principal announced the event over the PA system. The next few days were dominated by nonstop television coverage of the assassination and its aftermath. My mother idolized the Kennedys, especially Jacqueline, so our TV stayed on all weekend. I'm pretty sure I had read BRAVE NEW WORLD by then. As a preteen, I had definitely read and enjoyed a couple of the Narnia books. The life-changing experience of reading the rest of Lewis's works, though, didn't happen to me until about a decade later. So even if I'd seen an obituary for either of those authors on an inside page of the local newspaper, I wouldn't have taken much notice.

An incisive little book, BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL, by Peter Kreeft, imagines a conversation among Kennedy, Huxley, and Lewis immediately after death in a sort of celestial waiting room. I highly recommend it.

In case you haven't read 11/22/63, Stephen King's monumental, exhaustively researched time travel novel about the Kennedy assassination, I recommend that, too. Its time travel rules have a twist I haven't seen anywhere else, and the result of the hero's journey into the past doesn't turn out in any of the ways one would expect.

Margaret L. Carter

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

No True Vampire

In reading an anthology called THE UNDEAD AND PHILOSOPHY, edited by Richard Greene and K. Silem Mohammad, I have a bone (or maybe an entire skeleton) to pick with the first essay, “The Badness of Undeath,” by Richard Greene. Greene has a lot of penetrating speculations to offer about why we consider undeath not only worse than being alive but a fate worse than death. One of his premises, however, strikes me as wrongheaded. At the start of his argument, he excludes vampires with souls, zombies with free will, and other nontraditional undead from the category he’s discussing. He maintains they aren’t “real” vampires and zombies. In fact, he says in so many words, “In this chapter, all vampires and zombies will be considered to be unfriendly and dangerous. Moreover, all vampires will be considered to be cursed or damned and evil by nature….”

What a blatant example of “begging the question,” building the conclusion of an argument into the premise. Of course if we take as an axiom that all vampires are damned and evil by nature, regardless of its other aspects most people will see undeath as a fate worse than mere death. Greene’s approach reminds me of the “no true Scotsman” trope: A Scottish gentleman hears news of an atrocious crime committed in an English city. He says, “No Scotsman would do such a thing.” When he’s told about a similar crime in Aberdeen, he retorts, “No TRUE Scotsman would do such a thing.” It’s easy to maintain that all vampires and zombies are “unfriendly and dangerous” if we state a priori that the “good guy vampires” and kinder, gentle zombies aren’t “true vampires” or “true zombies.”

Where should the line be drawn, if anywhere, beyond which a modified monster no longer fits into its original category? Are ethically responsible vampires real vampires? Are zombies with self-consciousness and free will, as in Piers Anthony’s world of Xanth, real zombies?

As to what makes undeath, if understood in the traditional horror-fiction sense, worse than death, so far in my reading of the anthology I haven’t seen any of the authors tackle head-on the issue of the soul. They seem to equate “soul” with consciousness. Not surprising, since the book analyzes the undead in terms of philosophy, not theology. However, the question reminds me of C. S. Lewis's rationale for our fear of dead people. Why are we afraid of ghosts and revolted by corpses? Lewis suggests that because body and soul were created as a vital unity, their separation strikes us as deeply unnatural. A disembodied spirit and a de-animated body both inspire an instinctive shudder. So a soulless body that’s still moving around is even more unnatural and therefore terrifying. To me, though, this argument applies mainly to zombies. If a vampire rises from the grave with free will and the same personality he or she had in life, why shouldn’t the vampire have the capacity for ethical choices? In that case, isn’t the “soul” still present in some sense? Even the first time I read DRACULA (at age twelve), I rebelled at the notion that becoming a vampire automatically changed Lucy into a fiend.

The concept of soullessness leads to another question, discussed but not settled in one of the anthology’s later essays: If the reanimated body is no longer ourselves—if our personality has vacated it—why do we feel horror at the idea of becoming a zombie or a traditional evil vampire? We haven’t become that, really, because we’ve left the building. For instance, according to the official theory in BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, during the creation of a vampire the human soul departs, and a demon takes possession of the body. Nevertheless, when Angel gets his soul back, he suffers profound guilt for all the evil deeds he committed while “he” was a soulless vampire. The more we consider the issue, the more tangled it gets.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Story Springboards Part 4 - The Art of Interesting Episodes by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Story Springboards Part 4
The Art of Interesting Episodes
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Here is the index of previous posts relevant to this discussion:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/index-post-to-art-and-craft-of-story.html

In Part 3 of this series,
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/story-springboards-part-3-art-of.html
we started sketching out the issues and topics relevant to constructing an Episodic Plot.

We noted that most books on how to write fiction end up with the famous writer just saying that a new writer simply has to write an "interesting story" and it will sell.  That is what most famous writers have done to get famous, and it is good advice.

Problem is -- how do you write something "interesting?"  What do you do with all the story ideas boiling around in your head to form them into an "interesting" story?

That brought us to the problem of what exactly the word "interesting" actually means.

A tweet from twitter attributed the property "interesting" to thoughts, which set us off on an investigation of the properties of language and its use for communication.

What exactly does "interesting" mean?

One person means one thing by a word, another means a different thing -- but they both think they mean the same thing by that word.

I Love You is one of those marvelous examples.  Men mean one thing during sex, women hear another totally different thing in those words.  Later, comparing notes, furious arguments and searing emotions erupt.

Words are incendiary weapons.  Very possibly words are "weapons of mass destruction" instead of "weapons of mass instruction." 

To a writer, "words" are the, single, most interesting subject in creation! 

So to ponder what "interesting" is all about, what it really means, let's look at what most people would consider to be the opposite of interesting.

Boring.

Miscommunication, which we discussed in Part 3, over various concepts of TIME in various cultures has been the cause of culture-wars throughout history.  Miscommunication between the sexes involving the simple little phrase "I love you," (which is more precise in Greek, but still very slippery), has caused wars and the rise and fall of huge corporations.

Miscommunication between the generations likewise causes massive friction, and shapes personalities during childhood. 

As the twig is bent; so grows the tree.   What your love-life will shape up to be might be discernible in childhood via the issue of, "Mommy, I'm bored." -- (or put another way, how you learn to move from 'bored' to 'interested.') 

Miscommunication causes the "I'm bored," conversation between child and adult to go nowhere. 

The child is convinced that "interesting" is a property of THINGS, and boredom would be gone if only Mommy would supply an interesting toy, or game. 

Mommy, having survived boredom, probably knows that "interesting" is a property of the person who is interested, not of the thing they are interested in.

The Happily Ever After (HEA = never bored?) ending is a full resolution of the conflict while the HFN (Happily for Now = I found an interesting Event/Person) ending is a partial resolution -- leading to SEQUELS when boredom sets in again and the search for another interesting object is launched.

"I love you" can be all about sustaining an "interest" in you.  Many happily married couples cite a fascination with the "surprising" (i.e. Uranus/Aquarius) nature of the relationship. 

SIDENOTE: Tom Baker, who played DOCTOR WHO for many years, was a multiple Aquarius and played the Doctor in that "footloose" interested in all humans, never attached to anyone for long, mode of the Aquarius male. 

The core essence of the Art of Episodic Plotting (which reached a level of perfection with Baker's DOCTOR) is simply the concept "interesting."

Spock made the single word "Interesting" a household metaphor. 

INTERESTING is something children just don't understand.  It happens to them sporadically, is totally delightful, turns on something inside that they adore, makes the wriggle with pleasure, and they don't know why that happens. 

A child has no mastery of how to direct their own attention or hold attention on a subject long enough to penetrate to the core concept.

Part of the definition of "child" is the state of being "non-sexual" or "pre-sexual."  A child lacks a direct awareness of sexuality.  But it is there, within them, anyway, and something at the periphery of that zone of awareness is stirred when "interest" is "aroused."   

You know how easily a child is distracted from whatever they are doing or however they are feeling.  The older the child, the harder they are to distract.

One underlying problem today is how adults have not developed attention spans longer than say, a 14 year old's.  Beyond the natural lengthening of attention span by age, it takes training and discipline to stick to a task long enough to finish it. 

How many would-be writers have a multitude of unfinished works?  How many rejections happen because a work is turned in 3 or 4 drafts too soon -- for lack of that attention-span discipline to finish it?

That kind of discipline of attention comes only with maturity (in astrology represented by Saturn.)  The age of 7 is pivotal, and interestingly enough that year is the year that Saturn makes its first square with its own place. The opposition (1st peak of success) comes at age 14. 

That attention span deficit is why you can "distract" a child under the age of 7 from a tantrum or "Mommy buy me this" or any other problematic behavior.

Which brings us to why we discussed the linguistic and cultural aspects of TIME as a component of "interesting" last week.  

The condition of childhood is a SHORT view of TIME (time is also represented by Saturn) -- the adult condition requires lengthening that TIME-SPAN or attention-span.  For the mature adult, "now" is a much longer span of time than it is for a child. 

But attention span does not lengthen naturally, or simply by the passage of time.  It is just like musculature -- it changes and matures only by usage, by exercise, by effort. 

That's another reason the HEA or "Happily Ever After" ending seems implausible to many.  "Ever After" is a long time to be "interested" in anything, let alone a person.  Those who remain mystified by their roving "interest" and are subject to spans of "boredom" will not be able to relate to being interested in someone for the rest of their lives.  Those who have mastered their internal "interest" needle can much more easily imagine a person who is captivating for a lifetime. 

The trick of lengthening attention span (so you can hold a job and/or a Relationship) is to learn all about the intricate notions of "interesting" so that external influences can't "distract" you.

That lesson is also the trick behind writers finishing a writing project -- something as long as a book takes months, sometimes years, to finish.  Most of the hours spent toiling on a book are spent on repetitive, "boring" tasks.  Thus the writer who intends to make a living from the craft must master their own attention mechanism -- master it to a degree not expected of the audience.

To do that, the writer who works consciously (rather than from innate Talent) can benefit from understanding the abstract depths of the word "interesting."

What is the origin of interest, what is the effect, what is the use, why does it exist, how does it work?

How many parents know the following exchange by heart?

"I'm bored!"

"You have a closet full of toys. Here, play with this one."

"I don't want to."

"Try this one"

"It's too boring." 

"Well, I can't help you."

A while later, "Mommy, I have nothing to do!"

"So do your homework."

"No. It's boring." 

And on and on. 

Many writers will be able to recognize in that exchange the same pattern that underlies the phenomenon that has become known as "Writer's Block." 

Being "bored" by your own thoughts is not a property of the thoughts any more than a child being bored by their toys is a property of the toys. (ask a toy-manufacturer; watch focus-group tests of toys!)

No parent has ever won this fight about boring toys (or homework) unless the parent has matured enough to have spotted the misnomer issue with "interesting" that we discussed in Part 3. 

The misnomer issue is all about language, about words and definitions, where they come from, how they evolve, and how we come to agreement on what words mean. 

Words exist at the intersection of Art and Magic, but we use them for Science.

The concept of where "interesting" originates can be applied to Writer's Block as well. 

Maturation is the process of sorting out what originates inside of you (e.g. who you are, finding yourself, etc.) from what originates outside. 

Maturation is the process of becoming an individual distinct from your parents, and even from your environment, becoming independent and self-sufficient.  Watch time-lapse photos of a fetus developing, and consider that process continues throughout the entire lifetime. 

The child is "bored" because the child is not "self-sufficient." 

Very often the writer is "blocked" because their own material "bores" them, just as the child's own toys bore the child.  (classic cure parents learn is to save a new toy for those rainy-day-I'm-bored moments, using the Uranus method of igniting "interest" via novelty.  This tactic may benefit the parent more than it does the child, but that's a topic for a YA novel.) 

The immature can substitute novelty for interest. 

You can be immature at age 50! ... in fact, there is always some part of you that is immature. 

So we're closing in on the core element that defines what is, or is not, "interesting," and thus what a writer must do to turn out an "interesting story." 

"Interesting" is partially about something you didn't know before.

The tweet  cited in Part 3 indicates that happiness comes from having interesting thoughts -- and that can be interpreted as being "self-sufficient." 

Many children learn to entertain themselves by telling themselves stories they make up (most who eventually sell novels start off like that!).   

Reading stories written by people who are more mature than you are can inspire you to make the effort to distinguish yourself, to become the individual you are born to be, to realize the unique potential that is you. 

But while we are, each of us, unique, we are also composed of the same array of variables that compose everyone else.

We discussed this from the writer's point of view in the series on Astrology and Tarot. 

You'll find those posts listed in Part 3's index to Art and Craft of Story and Plot Arcs summary of previous discussions.  (see the top of this post)

We are unique by virtue of having our common variables filled with differing values, thus making each of us a unique pattern composed of components we have in common. 

That's why "astrology" works -- everyone has the ten variables astrology studies, but they are arranged differently and each Soul uses each of these variables with different degrees of mastery. 

Everyone has a Sun Sign -- so we all understand on a non-verbal level "what" the Sun Sign provides to people (e.g. energy). 

Captain Kirk was acted by an Aries (so was Spock) and portrayed an Aries - an explorer charging ahead of the pack, not a "Leader" (Leo) who made policy.  Kirk was not comfortable in the Admiral's role (Leo) and wanted his ship back -- for a reason.  Gene Roddenberry was a Leo and ran the set like a Leo male.

1/12th of us have the same Sun Sign (and usually don't get along with those of the same sun sign.)  We recognize that commonality and resonate to it.

And so on around the zodiac -- then variations modify each of us when "Houses" are considered.  And the Soul wearing that natal chart is the wild-card that changes everything. 

So while we are self-sufficient individuals, we are also part of various groupings, (1st House of Self, always opposite 7th House of Group) and we do not see a contradiction in this. 

Thus, when we read a book on writing craft that says all you need to do to sell your writing is to tell an "interesting story," we do not see a contradiction in that instruction.  We grow up considering "interesting" a property external to Self, a property of the object of interest.  We grow up as audience, not performer.

We resonate to that instruction because we have, at some time, been interested in something.

We have read a lot of books that we found "boring."

We all want to write "interesting" books.

Surely the essential ingredient that distinguishes an interesting book from a boring book is a property of the book.

Books that don't sell well fail in the marketplace because they are intrinsically boring, right?

But then how can it be that those books, when self-published, have a small cadre of enthusiastic fans?

They say, "There's no accounting for taste."  Really?

Some will also say that the people who adore one type of book (say, for example the Romance Novel?) just aren't as well educated as normal people.

All of these paths of reasoning are based on the idea that the quality called "interesting" is a property of the object which has captivated interest (book, movie, TV show, game, whatever) and not a quality of the specific person who has become "interested."

A writer has to look at it differently.

A writer is out-putting the object in which other people will be "interested."

That is a drastic Point Of View shift, from audience to performer (writing is a performing art.)

Ponder that curious property of language noted above: one distinguishing characteristic of children who will grow up to be professional writers is interest in the meaning of words.

Words and their meaning are not intrinsically interesting.  If they were, everyone would be "a writer."  Everyone would read the dictionary for fun! 

No!  "Interesting" is a property of the person who is interested -- not the object that they are interested in.

In writing an "interesting story," the writer is not the person who is to be interested (writing itself is often lonely and boring).  The audience, the reader, is the one whose interest is to be ignited.

The reader's interest is inside that reader -- not inside the story. 

The writer does NOT write "an interesting story."  That's how it seems to the reader -- but that is not how the process seems to the writer. 

The discovery some writers make only after selling novels and seeing them marketed, listening to fans raving and others giving it 1-star on Amazon, bloggers tearing it apart and sounding as if they never read it, is very simple.

Marion Zimmer Bradley always quoted, "The book the writer wrote is not the book the reader reads."

What does that mean?

The book the reader reads is either "interesting" or "boring" depending on the READER, not on the book.

MZB also held that anyone who can learn to write a literate English sentence can sell their writing - fiction and/or non-fiction. 

Another mentor of mine was Andre Norton (the YA author).  I was in her house one time, and she gave me a tour of her book shelves.  She had a vast collection of rare books on anthropology, archeology, pre-history, etc. etc. and could tell you what she'd learned from each of them.

Just listening to her talk about those precious books ignited a ferocious desire to read them -- not because the books had the quality "interesting" but because she was interested in them.  If you picked one up and tried to plow through it, you would be bored to tears. 

Those books engaged Norton, though.  *yes, I know Norton was a pen name.*

Good teachers are like that.  They not only know their subjects inside-out and upside-down, but they just plain and purely love the subject (whatever it is at the moment).

I was "turned on to" DOCTOR WHO in just that way.  A friend visiting me who was a fan of my novels spent several hours on my back porch enthusing over THE DOCTOR in his various incarnations.  I had to get my hands on the videotapes.  I was not disappointed! 

"Interesting" is a property of a PERSON -- not of a THING. 

My friend who turned me on to The Doctor resonated to that material because of a property of her (which I shared). 

If you (the writer) are interested in what you are writing, many of your readers will "catch" that interest from you. 

Yes, "interesting" is contagious.

You don't write "an interesting book" -- you kindle the interest of others, not by the thoughts you think but by your sizzling-hot love of those thoughts.

"Interesting" happens when reading a book because of the CONTACT (like a lit match touching a candle wick) of your inner "flame" with the reader's inert wick.  It is not "the book" which is interesting.  It is YOU.

"Interesting" is a force, an electricity, a power, that you (your personality) conducts like a copper wire conducts electricity -- just like the human Soul conducts Love.  It's pure energy -- not a property of you, or the book you write, or any physical object, and not of the thought.  "Interesting" is a force - perhaps The Force - which you conduct into reality just as you conduct Love into reality. 

And the part of YOU that ignites the reader is usually some part that you are completely unaware exists, unaware that it is conducting a charge.  (springboard = potential energy; interesting = kinetic energy)

More: the part of the reader that is kindled is a part the reader is unaware exists.

It is the lack of awareness of those energies that causes the riveting of attention we term "interest." 

Interest is riveted just as when a person touches a "live wire" and electricity stiffens the person's body.

Just watch the practiced mom on the rainy day when the kid goes "I am bored."  She takes out a toy, (or maybe an adult book) and enthuses about it.  First thing you know, the kid is interested.  The kid has no idea WHY the kid is interested -- but the Mom has studied that kid carefully and chosen from an array of available toys that "speak" to that part of the kid that is not yet developed.  When the Mom 'closes the contact' (throws the switch inside the kid), interest happens. 

The process of personal growth -- of "going where no man has gone before" -- is what we term "interesting."  Traveling there takes energy -- that energy flows through the contact with external reality and into the person creating the potential for change, the tantalizing promise of change.

A Romance happens (Neptune - the blurring, unreality-effect of the zodiac) when two people meet and each finds within the other something that they don't know is inside themselves.

That same definition applies to frenemies, and to "Moby Dick" obsession-style Arch Enemies (Moriarty) (Darth Vader). 

Recognition of Self inside Other leading to an expansion of the definition of Self is another way of defining "interesting."  It happens when energy flows from one person to another. 

Expanding (Jupiter) is part of Maturation (Saturn), which explains why the deliberate mental gymnastic exercises necessary to expand attention-span leads to self-mastery which leads to finding absolutely everything "interesting" by becoming large enough (Jupiter) to touch things, and strong enough (Saturn) to control the in-rushing energy. 

So spend some time walking around your life looking for manifestations of that definition of "interesting" as an energy akin to Love.  We'll be using it to construct "episodic stories" and structuring "climaxes." 

We'll drill down into Springboards a bit more in the Dec. 10, 2013 post, Theme-Character Integration Part 5 - Fame and Glory - When You're Rich They Think You Really Know. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Life in Our Galaxy?

Thrilling news for SF fans: How many Earth-like planets does our galaxy contain? In recent reports, some astronomers speculate there may be 40 billion:

Galaxy Quest

Of course, the existence of worlds that can support our kind of life doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll meet humanoid aliens we can socialize and maybe even interbreed with. Consider the millions of species on our own planet. As Heinlein’s narrator in HAVE SPACE SUIT, WILL TRAVEL remarks, spiders don’t look anything like us, yet they enjoy living in our houses.

So where is everybody? No doubt you’ve all heard of the Fermi paradox:

Fermi Paradox

If Earth-like planets are so common in the universe, shouldn’t enough of them have developed the capability of interstellar travel or at least communication that we should have been visited or contacted by now?

I prefer the hypotheses of “they choose not to interact with us” and “Earth has purposely not been contacted” over the more pessimistic beliefs that intelligent life is rare, usually doesn’t develop a technological civilization, inevitably destroys itself before inventing interstellar travel, is too widely separated in time and space to overlap with our civilization, or is typically so alien it wouldn’t want to contact us or we wouldn’t recognize it if it did.

Maybe there really is a Prime Directive: Maybe the Galactic Federation has imposed a quarantine on us until we’re mature enough to join the civilized universe. Or possibly our location on the edge of the galaxy means they just haven’t gotten around to us yet. Given the scrappy history of intercultural exchanges in our own history, I like to speculate that our first alien contact may not involve official explorers or diplomats. Our first visitors might be merchants looking for new trading partners, pirates in search of loot, refugees like the former slaves in the series ALIEN NATION, or maybe even lost tourists. I once read a story in which a flying saucer landed in a suburban family’s back yard—and the “pilot” was an alien kid who’d accidentally driven off with his parents’ vehicle.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Story Springboards Part 3 - Art of Episodic Plotting by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Story Springboards Part 3
Art of Episodic Plotting
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg


Here is the index of previous posts relevant to this discussion:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/index-post-to-art-and-craft-of-story.html

This post series on Story Springboards explores the essence of what "interesting" means from the point of view of a writer and how to use that knowledge to sell fiction, especially Science Fiction, and double especially Science Fiction Romance. 

All the books on how to write stories tell you (without showing) that to sell fiction, all you have to do is write an "interesting" story. 

No instruction is more frustrating than that simple sentence "just write an interesting story."  So let's delve a little deeper than writing teachers usually do. 

"What is interesting and how do you write it?"

And what has that to do with the Art of Episodic Plotting? 

Note the first post in this series is from a selling writer who is intrigued by "art heists" -- and introduces the elements about art theft which is intriguing to her.  
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/01/story-springboards-part-1-art-heists-by.html

This multi-part discussion of springboards is intricately related to the underlying structure of short stories, novels and screenplays -- serials, sequels, episodes, braided plots, converging plots, parallel plots, all sorts of technically different but very marketable structures. 

"Interesting" is a property of those structures much more than it is of a particular subject, but remember that THEME is the foundation of story structure, which is why we've been examining how to "integrate" theme into each of the other elements of structure.

For each type of structure, a different type of SPRINGBOARD is necessary.

The springboard (wound up potential energy that is about to hurl the reader into a ballistic arc with an "ending" of belly-flopping or slicing into the pool) is energized by the quality "interesting"  but "aimed" at a target which is identified as "genre."  The strength and flexibility of the springboard you construct depends on how well "integrated" theme is with the rest of the components of the story structure. 

That is, you can sell any structure in any genre, mix and match, if you construct your springboard just right. 

The springboard is the main subject discussed in your logline, pitch, or query letter, but it is never mentioned by name.  The springboard has to be shown, not told.

This is why the "logline" or pitch for a story, and the "query letter" and synopsis or summary or treatment, is such a useful tool to the editor who has to choose whether to invest the company's money in this project.

The "springboard" reveals which audience demographic will be "interested" by this story.

Showing not telling your springboard is also why it is so hard for a writer to create the selling pitch or query letter -- the inclination is to TELL the editor, not show.  But the editor is looking for a master of show-don't-tell. 

The logline, query letter, etc reveal to the editor whether you, the writer, know what you're doing -- or not. 

If an editor backs a writer who does not know what he/she is doing, the editor tends to get fired.  The alternative for the editor is to try to teach that writer the "ropes."  Time spent on teaching one writer is time that can't be spent perfecting other manuscripts.  So an editor who is "developing" one writer has to buy other products that are perfected already. 

So there is a small market for beginning writers who haven't mastered "springboards," and a large market for writers who have. 

Story Springboards Part 2 is found here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/04/story-springboards-part-2-tv-shows.html

So now let's put "interesting" under the microscope. 

A while ago, the following "interesting" tweet appeared in my twitterfeed. 
--------------
Tweet from http://twitter.com/MadMachX    
The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts.

--Timothy Dwight
----------------

This philosophy (yes it is a philosophy and therefore makes a terrific novel theme) is based on a "misnomer" that everyone believes from earliest childhood -- the labeling of an object (or in this case a thought) with an attribute which does not originate within that object. 

Here's the URL to the post where the power of the "misnomer" is discussed in depth.  It reveals an essential component of the process of grabbing the "interest" of a target audience, the use of language. 
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/02/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-6.html

Cross-correlate that post on misnomers with the post on TALENT

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/05/talent-mystique-or-mistake.html

The misnomer twist in that tweet above is the attribution of the property "interesting" to the object in which the person is interested. 

The philosophy behind that attribution is very similar to the thinking behind the misnomer "Fast Food."  (the healthiness of the food is attributed to the method of delivery -- misdirecting the problem-solving attention away from the real problem.)

Remember a problem is a manifestation of a CONFLICT - and conflict is the essence of story as well as plot.

In constructing the foundation for a long series of novels, a TV Series, a movie-serial, or an episodic videogame, you have to load the problem(s) with enough potential energy to "spring" all the way to the ending of the Series. 

Understanding climaxes (both within a story, at the end of a scene or chapter, and at the end of a story, and how the series of climaxes must relate to each other) requires an understanding of the initial state -- the springboard before it has sprung, and where the weaknesses are in the springboard that might cause it to break or mis-fire. 

I don't think there are any books on writing craft that reveal the internal mechanism of the writer's mind that must function (consciously for some, unconsciously for most) to produce a "springboard" with enough energy wound up in it to reach "the end" of a long arc (series of novels, or a TV Series) and still have enough punch to blow off energy in the biggest climax of the series.

In a TV Series, there is usually a team of writers brainstorming the final climax, which is often why a series will "peter out" or fall off track as writers come and go from the team.

Most writers who do formulate a powerful springboard, do it by accident, but there is a method to it that can be learned, even by those born without any writing Talent.

One thing "writers" come by naturally, that is a sure sign a child has the capacity to make a living at writing, is a curiosity about words for their own sake, an interest in words beyond the mere meaning.

Such a curiosity includes words in many languages, both cognate with the native language of the child and non-cognate languages -- AND "made up" languages like Klingon or Elvish.

So the child learns early that you can't translate anything from one language to another, not really.  You can approximate and create the illusion of understanding, but not the understanding itself.  That's why most all children create their own words for the feelings and concepts developing in their minds -- convinced no human has ever before needed such a word.

You can't really translate from that internal apprehension of a "meaning" to an external, mutually agreed upon meaning. 

VENN DIAGRAM


Look at all the circles as representing the same concept in different languages. 

And consider that children and adolescents don't "speak the same language" as adults, or grandparents.  Language reflects the "generation gap."  A "living language" evolves.

A concept symbolized by a word has connotations and denotations. 

Denotations are easy to translate most of the time, but the native speaker hears a word and hears echos of all the connotations that go with the denotation and all the depth and texture of semantic loading, of emotional associations, and colorations imposed by their own generation -- and by prior generations. 

For example, when you hear the word Chocolate, do you FEEL 'bitter' or 'sweet?'  Chocolate itself is very bitter.  But we think sweet because we are accustomed to sugar that's lightly flavored with chocolate.

Note how an English word may overlap a small arc of Mandarin and another Arc of Hebrew -- but coincide reasonably well with both only in that tiny section in the middle.  And even there, there are discernible differences (symbolized by the colors). 

You might say an English word with most of your meaning at the top of the orange circle, and the translator could only find Mandarin or Hebrew words at the bottom of the English set of associated concepts where the circles overlap.

But when the translator says that word in Mandarin, the listener would "hear" all the connotations and associations and allusions contained in that word's Mandarin circle, barely noting the area of definition where there is an overlap, and never knowing of the existence of the associations you actually meant.

I've had novels "translated" -- they are unintelligible in the translated form.   

The same overlapping circles effect is true even within a given language.  That's why children invent their own words and define their own circles.

No two people know or use any given word in exactly the same way because we each have different accumulated connotations that we attach to words as we learn them, and emotional associations that are evoked because of subsequent experiences. 

Children learn this difference in usage early in life -- for example, the 4 year old's definition of NOW is very different from their 40 year old mother's definition of NOW.  "I want my blankey," does not mean "I want my nice clean blanket after it's been through the wash." 

So consider the three circles as three people - mother, father, child - earnestly discussing when they will arrive at the child's friend's birthday party. "Now" does not mean "now." 

If such variance exists among speakers of the same language, consider how different languages express views of the world that are inherently different and literally untranslatable. 

No two languages divide the world into the same circles of definition.

The word, "interesting," is subject to this very interesting effect.

A similar effect happens between two people using the same language, and it is a larger effect when two people are using different dialects of the same language.  (Is that piece of furniture a davenport, a sofa, or a couch?  A writer has to know what their reader will envision.) 

Those who know only one language and culture learned before the age of 7 (the age at which language brain centers start to become set), can't grasp how the very words we use shape our perceptions of reality and limit our imagination.  Things that are commonplace to some people are unthinkable to others -- simply because of language.

We think in words.  That's why children make up words to talk to their friends of the same age. 

The classic examples from Linguistics include Navaho, and other Native American languages that depict TIME not as a linear arrow, but as something else.

One of the complaints against Native Americans in the 1870's was that they were "lazy."  Or untruthful.  The Native American would agree to work a job, and then not show up "on time."  The person who hired the Native American would fire him for being late, and the Native would be offended because he wasn't late -- even if he was three days late. 

No amount of translating could work through this conceptual problem.  The solution then employed was to conscript Native children into American schools and inculcate the linguistic domains of definition (and ethics, morals and religion that go with them) into the child at an early enough age that the child would grow up to be employable (which was deemed the key to happiness). 

OK, none of the real history was that simple.  But a lot of it hinges on words providing limits to what we can conceptualize.  There are many such examples in cultures around the world. 

If this kind of gap is possible among humans, just imagine what we may run into on some of those planets now being discovered "out there.' 

Hebrew, likewise, handles the verb TO BE in ways entirely different from English.

When concepts of TIME and EXISTENCE are configured differently, everything in the culture that uses those concepts becomes configured differently.  The differences cause the most trouble when the participants yelling across the cultural gap are unaware there is a gap.

This kind of miscommunication is the ESSENCE OF CONFLICT. 

Resolution of conflict is one essential ingredient in climaxes. 

Anticipating a climax is the essence of "Interesting." 

Next week we'll look at "boring" for clues about how to write "interesting" stories. 

January 21, 2014 Story Springboards Part 7 takes a closer look at boring/interesting with skills&drills. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com