Theme-Dialogue Integration - Part 1 - What's Eating Him? by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Dialogue Integration - Part 1 - What's Eating Him? by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

---------But first a long commercial -----------



That is part of the LOREFUL Development Team
Today is the kickoff of the KICKSTARTER for the Sime~Gen science fiction RPG to be published by Loreful which will bring the humanity you've met in the Sime~Gen novels into first contact with aliens-from-outer-space. 

Here is an article about Aharon Cagle, the fellow whose brand new company, Loreful, has licensed Sime~Gen for a Galactic Adventure.  He's the one holding the green light-saber in the photo above. 

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/morning_call/2013/08/cincinnati-startup-founder-left.html


People have given me blank looks when I say KICKSTARTER, so let me explain how this works.


In our old world, people who wanted to start a business had to find venture capital from rich people, so all the rich got richer and the poor got poorer, and only rich people got any choices.

Today, us not-so-rich and even somewhat poor folks have a chance to gamble on brand new businesses. 

OK, you don't get "dividends" if the business succeeds, but you get something (depending on how much you contribute, the list is on the side of the page). 

What you do get that we've never gotten before is a SAY-SO about what products reach the market.

If you want SFR, you don't have to beg "editors" or "publishers" in Manhattan and be mad if they won't publish SFR.  There's a new process that puts all the power in your hands. 

This new process is CROWD-SOURCING and there are a lot of websites that do it, with various rules.

KICKSTARTER was one of the first, and its deal is you don't pay anything unless and until the project makes its stated goal.  They collect money by billing your AMAZON account, or your PAYPAL account, (you choose) but the bill only goes through if the stated goal is met.  Then the company is obligated to keep you informed (by email) and to deliver the perq they promised. 

So AMBROV X the Sime~Gen RPG is doing a Kickstarter. 

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aharon/ambrov-x-a-sime-gen-roleplaying-game

A kickstarter project only lasts a few weeks, so either chip in now, or the window of opportunity to choose will be gone.

I know where the people behind this game are "coming from" -- they want to see a balanced weave of story and plot, and they want very much to have some characters and some threads through the Game that are essentially Science Fiction Romance. 

You can play a character of either gender and partner with either gender.  Given enough funding, they can make every combination of choice available.  It's a "vision" they have now -- you can make it real not just for yourself, but for the world by contributing a bit of money right now. 

This is the game that might change the perception of SFR where it matters most, and lead to more change. 

After all, Sime~Gen is credited with having opened a crack in the Science Fiction genre-wall to let in huge amounts of "Relationship."  There have already been some successful Games with broad streaks of Romance.  This Dev Team for Loreful has some unique ideas for broadening those streaks.


--------------------END COMMERCIAL-----------

OK, so last week we thought a lot about Dialogue:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/dialogue-part-6-how-to-write-bullshit.html

Links to previous posts on Dialogue are at the top of that Part 6 post.

The gist of the matter is that we have looked at how to write LIAR dialogue,
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/11/dialogue-part-5-how-to-write-liar.html

and last week, we examined the difference between liar dialogue and bullshit dialogue with a side-trip into hate speech, relevant to the SFWA controversy, and to internet posts and comments.

All that theory stuff is just fine, but to get a conversation going between two (or more!) characters, they have to have something to talk about and something to say about it.

Those are really two different SKILLS -- giving your character something to talk about AND something to say about it.

"to talk about" is the topic of the story, the THEME

"to say about it" is the character's own personal, sometimes emotional, opinion about that theme.

In addition, there's a third skill in dialogue called "off the nose" in screenwriting.

It means you don't mean what you say, but your meaning is obvious to the other character, and to the audience.

The best example of "off the nose" is sarcasm.  You say a thing is WONDERFUL, meaning clearly it's horrible and you are not surprised, but still shocked.  Or you can say many other things with tone of voice using that single word, WONDERFUL.  Alternatively, you can actually mean wonderful when you say wonderful -- but will the character hearing that understand it?

Writing great dialogue is about communicating the character's opinion on the topic of the theme to the audience, without saying that opinion in "so many words." 

"Off The Nose" dialogue requires applying a "show don't tell" technique to your choice of words your character will use. 

Before you can choose those words, (then trim them down for brevity, punch, impact, pacing, characterization, etc.) your character has to have:

a) something to say
b) a reason for saying it
c) a character to say it to
d) a good reason to believe the other character will understand what's being said

Take those 4 together, and it amounts to SOMETHING HAS TO BE EATING HIM/HER.

That something is probably related to the CONFLICT that's driving the plot, but in the deep psychological way in which we redirect or misdirect our emotional energy at some proximate petty annoyance rather than at the real problem.

For example, take a man whose marriage is falling apart, and maybe he just got fired from his job, or his business is going bankrupt.  Yeah, business going bankrupt is a good one.

These two kinds of "my life is falling apart" generally come when Saturn (which has a 29 year cycle and builds what you normally think of as your life) hits a sensitive point in the horoscope testing how strong the structure you have built actually is, and/or Pluto slams into a different sensitive point at the same time -- powering the Build/Restrict action of Saturn with the dramatic magnification of Pluto. 

This is an example of how to apply my ASTROLOGY JUST FOR WRITERS posts to creating integrated-techniques such as we are talking about now in these advanced posts.

Astrology just for writers posts are collected here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

Once you've determined what sort of position in life your main characters are in, then you can figure at what age the kind of events you plan to hurl at them would happen.

For example, the fellow who stepped forward as a whistle-blower on the NSA scandal is 29, and his decision to do this is entirely typical of 29-year-olds.  That's a sink-or-swim year for everyone because it is your first Saturn Return (where Saturn gets back to where it was when you were born).  It is the point at which the strictures of Saturn become the freedom to choose what to do next. 

29 is the age of divorce and re-marriage, or perhaps of taking the insane risk of having your first child.  It is the year of car accidents, of getting injured in war and having your whole future reset into a different direction because of it.  It is finishing a Medical School internship etc -- it is either the fruits of past labors or the freedom after failing.

Each of the planets produces such a cycle, so that very specific types of dramatic challenges are tied to very specific ages.  You don't need astrology to figure this out.  Just read a pile of biographies. 

So what there is about a specific situation that is eating your character from the inside out and causing his OUTBURSTS of dialogue, will characterize that character because what bothers people about things is very much age-specific.  Where the irritation will find a target in the environment is also age-specific.  Choosing what is bugging your character, and what he targets with his annoyance, will SHOW DON'T TELL his characterization.

Back to the fellow whose marriage is falling apart (7th House) and business is going bankrupt (10th House).  So OK, he has a dust-up fight with his wife over breakfast, directs "hate speech" at her, she retaliates with lies (technical terms there!  Read those books discussed in Dialogue posts), he storms out and just makes it to the Bank to see if he got the loan he needs, and bull shits the bank into giving him the loan.

He gets to his business location and finds OSHA agents padlocking the doors, his employees standing around the parking lot.  (OSHA administers the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act. )

His FAILURE AT EVERYTHING boils over and he decks the hapless clerk who's padlocking the door and plastering big orange signs on it.

Next scene, he's sitting in jail and a public defender arrives.  "Where's my lawyer?"  "Said you owe him too much money and he's not working for you anymore." 

Now what does this guy SAY? 

Do you think he'll say something precisely (on the nose) relevant to the current situation?

Or will he explode, spewing out emotion pent up from all the PRIOR MISTAKES that have led to this?

Is he so mad at his wife he decks the public defender and ends up in psych hold? 

Does he see his fate as the consequence of his actions?

Does he see his fate as the consequence of what other people (who hate him?) do? 

Or is the Public Defender the Soul Mate he's really been looking for?  Is SHE in such need of having her career saved by his case that he HELPS HER, thus cementing a new course for his life?

If the Public Defender (you are watching SUITS aren't you?)






is his soul mate, why does she turn up at this moment?  Have they met before?  Does either have a drinking problem?  What does each one believe about the direction their world is going in, what effect their actions have on that direction, and the ultimate destiny of the world as a whole? 

Does either one know anything about HISTORY? 

Say, for example, this small business owner whose life is in the tank (rather literally), is a descendant of someone hugely famous, and thus is "being eaten" inside by a need to live up to his heritage and become famous, too, he might respond in a very specific way to the "LEGALLY BLONDE" type Public Defender.



If he knew her before, say in college?, and knew she is from a hugely famous family, he might respond a different way to her replacing the attorney he can't pay (only he can because he's got that bank loan in his pocket -- or does he? Is he thinking the loan will be retracted because of OHSA?)

What if the gorgeous lawyer woman waltzes into his cell with all kinds of supercilious body language, maybe a reminder of his wife that morning, and he roars to his feet and DECKS HER!? 

Punching someone out is actually "dialogue" though not spoken words.  So is sex.  Actions can constitute silent conversation - an exchange of meaning the audience can follow even though there are no words, has the content of "dialogue."  The same kind of thinking goes behind choosing those action-interchanges.

So let's say the two of them met in college, say in a History course, they desperately had to pass, so they helped each other (maybe they helped each other cheat?)


Let's say this is the content of the course they had in college, and what I quote Ed Wilson as explaining below is some of the historical knowledge and attitude they have in common with each other -- that this hapless failure of a man does not have in common with his wife?

Ancient Pre-History

On Allan Cole's World on Facebook, Frank Gessel gave us this provocative link:

http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/historians/g/013108Procopius.htm

--------quote about Procopius ------
Definition: Procopius was a Byzantine official and historian best known for his unofficial, gossipy, secret history of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian and his wife Theodora.

Born in Palestine, in Caesarea, Procopius lived from c. A.D. 500 probably to some time after 562. He served as legal advisor and secretary to Justinian's military talent Belisarius whom he accompanied on campaigns. In 527 they were in Mesopotamia; in 533, in Africa; and in 536, in Italy. He lived in Constantinople from 542, perhaps becoming prefect twenty years later, in 562, if he was still alive then.
-----------end quote------------


-------------quote Ed Wilson on Allan Cole's World on Facebook -----

Edward Wilson Jeff: Yes “Re-Conquer” is a good word here, after all that part of the world had conquered the part that was re-conquering it some time ago. Sort of like what happened in 1940 – 45 when America “re-took” the UK.

Read the excellent "Belisarius Series" by David Drake and Eric Flint for the action leading up to 535.

I have set the beginning of my story “Ride Byfrost Bridge” in the early part (Georgian calendar that wouldn’t be around for another 1000 years yet but…) of 535 because on 535 Feb. 8 the Sundia Straight volcano blew, and gave us the straight – and a major major injection of dust into the stratosphere. It was followed in 540 by a major at Ilopango in what is now El Salvador.

What this / these eruptions did was open the Sahara desert to the crossing by flees, and that brought the black death to Alexandria (still the heart of the grain trade) and thence to Constantinople (Justinian caught it), and thence via the pear trade to Glastonbury (where it decimated the Latin descendents population (Author’s people) resulting in the fall of Author two years later to the Anglo-Saxons (who later adopted Author as their ancestor).

It returned Scotland to the horror’s of 1635 – 1595 BC, and did much other major damage in history (breaking the great dam in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for the second time – and I know men with their names in the third dam).

It may have been that there were two VEI 8’s in close succession, and that ended Justinian’s plans. I await the results from the newly re-discovered Irish chronology to tell us which of these two good candidate years for a VEI 7 or 8 is authoritative, but it is a mess.

I'm cramming on the SV presentation for Westercon so goodbye for now

----------------------end quote of Ed Wilson-------------------

Yeah, FLEAS redistributed by Super-volcanoes.  We're talking serious worldbuilding here. 

If these two share this perspective/understanding of how their world got to be as it is today, a very unusual view of the world and its dynamics, it could be the wedge of intimacy between them.

It's a kind of Geek-bonding.  They speak the same language.

Now the writer's challenge becomes SHOW DON'T TELL the nature of that bond, of that perspective on how our fragile civilization has us embedded within it, facing these huge cosmic forces. 

From that, one can evolve an entire philosophy of life.  How does that view of how BIG the forces facing us are translate into decking an OSHA agent?

Is the government seen as a wildcatting super-volcano destroying civilization on Earth? 

If they BOTH see OSHA as an unstoppable force, and themselves as fleas, do they know this bit of History that Ed Wilson put together and the exchange goes something like:

"Fleas brought the Black Death and changed the politics of Europe.  Surely a Lawyer and a Businessman can deflect the wrath of a mere government department?"

I discussed this non-fiction book about a historic LOVE STORY (complete with Romeo and Juliet tragedy) here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/theme-character-integration-part-4.html

Queen of the Air:



The book Queen of the Air is about a woman circus performer who eventually marries (among many marriages for each) the man who perfected the Triple and first accomplished the 3 1/2 on the flying trapeze, Codona.  The book also features some of the personal biographies and interactions with the Flying Wallendas (who really were not flying trapeze artists, but high wire specialists). 

Did I mention the several times I've talked about this biography of the circus that the author started as a journalist, as did Allan Cole?  And Marion Zimmer Bradley also put in her stint in journalism and magazine editing.  As you are considering your career path, remember the biographical points of writers - journalism and travel are big commonalities among the best.

The Wallendas are still producing kids with the trick genes that give them superb balance, and here is an item about a recent stunt, with obvious publicity ramifications.

Nik Wallenda in Sarasota Florida
http://news.yahoo.com/florida-nik-wallenda-readies-grand-canyon-high-wire-201220347.html

That is a snatch of REAL LIFE history which illustrates my point about Saturn and Pluto.

Noel Tyl, the famous Astrologer, pinpointed a set of Natal Chart conditions which are the signature of people FAMOUS like these circus people whose lives and bigger-than-life LOVES are revealed in that book.

One of the components of that sort of FAME is a natal aspect of Pluto to one of the inner planets.  With that natal aspect, the ordinary person's Saturn cycle turns into HUGE ups and HUGE downs, and batterings and beatings by the Fates.

Note particularly at the end of Queen of the Air, how the divorce proceeding particulars are determined by Codona's previous (and now gone) fame.  If he takes the Queen of the Air to divorce court, the press will eat it up, in his moment of utter failure.

Now suppose our Businessman with the disaffected wife and the business closed by OSHA (probably because his wife did something that had prevented him from getting the loan to fix whatever violation he was closed down for) -- has been beset by the Media because his family is FAMOUS (maybe for some very progressive stances on stuff like workplace safety?), and his jailing is already being noticed.

Suppose he has a philosophical angst problem eating him.  Maybe this particular problem is a "ript from the headlines" type thing -- something which would be MAGNIFIED by a Pluto transit.

Pluto is called the Upper Octave of Mars -- Mars the god of war, Mars is the planet that is associated with that fit-of-temper response such as decking the OSHA agent represents.

Pluto is Mars Writ Large -- Mars is a fistfight, Pluto is a World War.  Mars is a volcano.  Pluto is a Super-volcano. 

Pluto transits bring up "whats eating you" from the subconscious in a major event, an eruption of raw energy.

Pluto transits time the trigger for emotionally striking out as an adult at the torments of childhood.

In Queen of the Air, we see how both these people had difficult, near-starvation, child-labor, abused childhoods.  And we see how, in that final divorce proceeding, that moment crystalized everything that had happened in childhood into a violent confrontation, writ large.

How does a writer use a piece of non-fiction like this?

Marion Zimmer Bradley used this same research, but not this book, by re-inventing the Circus and the Circus world of that time, and the history of the Triple Sommersault in The Catch Trap.  She used the Catholic background of many of the European circus families -- the non-fiction book doesn't really emphasize that Religion element, but Marion fearlessly told it like it was.  Catholicism dominated that world in a very orthodox way.

That RELIGION element added serious fire to her circus story of two gay guys.

Today, the public discourse on religion is shifting and changing, so looking over the Headlines for an item of religion to add fire to the Businessman, OSHA and the Lawyer story, I found a really explosive little item that could fuel this example Romance.

Suppose our Businessman scion of a famous (say) Catholic family had recently converted to Islam?

Suppose what's eating him is a philosophical conviction that this world is evil beyond all words, and he's either planning to do something about it, or toying with the idea of planning to do something about it.  The evidence of his leanings, and thinking (maybe cell phone call destination data, computer searches) is inside the business location now under OSHA lock? 

A great deal of the reason why he decked the OSHA agent would then have had to do with his RELIGIOUS SCHISM with his family -- with their HATE SPEECH against his new religion, and maybe against him because of his embracing a religion he sees as the one and only religion of peace. 

And into his cell walks this blonde lawyer shrink-wrapped in a tight white dress with a V neckline down to here.  He knows her from his college days (one would expect he'd slept with her at least once) when she rescued him from failing a History course by teaching him about Fleas and Super-volcanoes.  In that history lesson (if you check what Ed said above) you will see a great deal of information about the rise and fall of Islam in the Middle East. 

As a writer, you can pluck out the bits that would illustrate your theme, maybe rewrite or dramatize other bits of that history of Black Plague, fleas, the Sahara, etc.  This Businessman would have developed ( using selective amnesia) a whole take on the world based on the Black Plague, peace and justice.  His dialogue would then be based on that "take on the world" -- and if you keep it "off the nose" the audience will figure out his take on the world from what he says so you never, ever, have to tell your audience what he's thinking.

For a twist -- maybe the lawyer who won't work for him because he doesn't pay on time is his wife (soon to be ex)?  Or maybe the lawyer who walks into his cell is his wife of the moment?

The point is that his new Lawyer is the perfect symbol of everything he's come to revile about this current world, while at the same time (conflict is the essence of story) she arouses all that very primal, college age, sexuality. 

Perhaps his violent but throttled reaction to his wife's hate-speech that morning comes out at his new Lawyer and he decks her?  Or does it verbally?

Maybe her career is at a point where, if this client refuses her services, she'll be fired from the Public Defender's office, and given her previous record, might never be hired anywhere again (anywhere legal, that is).

See what you can do with conflict?

OK, so what can we extract from Businessman's tussle with Islam that could fuel this story in the same way that Catholicism fueled Marion Zimmer Bradley's circus novel?

Catholicism rejects gay guys, and MZB wrote about two gay Catholic guys in a Fame-driven profession (circus stars).

What does Islam reject as firmly as Catholicism rejects gays?

Here are two historical perspective summaries of the schism within Islam that has manifested in the sporadic violent attacks on symbols of Western culture -- we're looking for a symbol of Western Culture that is the core of this businessman's heart (as gayness was at the core of MZB's characters hearts) that is rejected by Islam.

-------------article 1------------
This one is from the New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/23/magazine/the-philosopher-of-islamic-terror.html

quote from the essay:  To anyone who has looked closely enough, Al Qaeda and its sister organizations plainly enjoy yet another strength, arguably the greatest strength of all, something truly imposing -- though in the Western press this final strength has received very little attention. Bin Laden is a Saudi plutocrat with Yemeni ancestors, and most of the suicide warriors of Sept. 11 were likewise Saudis, and the provenance of those people has focused everyone's attention on the Arabian peninsula. But Al Qaeda has broader roots. The organization was created in the late 1980's by an affiliation of three armed factions -- bin Laden's circle of ''Afghan'' Arabs, together with two factions from Egypt, the Islamic Group and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the latter led by Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's top theoretician. The Egyptian factions emerged from an older current, a school of thought from within Egypt's fundamentalist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, in the 1950's and 60's. And at the heart of that single school of thought stood, until his execution in 1966, a philosopher named Sayyid Qutb -- the intellectual hero of every one of the groups that eventually went into Al Qaeda, their Karl Marx (to put it that way), their guide.
Qutb (pronounced KUH-tahb) wrote a book called ''Milestones,'' and that book was cited at his trial, which gave it immense publicity, especially after its author was hanged. ''Milestones'' became a classic manifesto of the terrorist wing of Islamic fundamentalism.
....
But Sayyid Qutb stayed put and paid dearly for his stubbornness. Nasser jailed him in 1954, briefly released him, jailed him again for 10 years, released him for a few months and finally hanged him in 1966. Conditions during the first years of prison were especially bad. Qutb was tortured. Even in better times, according to his followers, he was locked in a ward with 40 people, most of them criminals, with a tape recorder broadcasting the speeches of Nasser 20 hours a day. Still, by smuggling papers in and out of jail, he managed to continue with his writings, no longer in the ''Western tinged'' vein of his early, literary days but now as a full-fledged Islamist revolutionary. And somehow, he produced his ''In the Shade of the Qur'an,'' this gigantic study, which must surely count as one of the most remarkable works of prison literature ever produced.
....
The NYTimes essay is from a book by the author of the essay.
Paul Berman has written for the magazine about Vaclav Havel, Vicente Fox and other subjects. He is the author of the coming ''Terror and Liberalism'' (W.W. Norton), from which this essay is adapted.




-----------end article 1----------



---------article 2-------------
From The Jerusalem Post:

The Region: Islamism: Back to the sources

It’s easy to see why Qaradawi is the leading Sunni Islamist thinker in the world today.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/The-Region-Islamism-Back-to-the-sources-316748

excerpted quote:
To read Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s 1984 book Islamic Education and Hasan al-Bana is to get an Islamic education. Nobody should be allowed to talk about Islam or political Islamism without having read this or similar texts. Just as with Marx’s “Communist Manifesto,” the Islamists, too, disdain to conceal their aims. Yet those who don’t read their actual texts, speeches and debates but only their public relations misinformation know nothing.

It’s easy to see why Qaradawi is the leading Sunni Islamist thinker in the world today, the spiritual guide behind Egypt’s Islamist revolution. He knows how to express his ideas clearly and persuasively.

Here is his depiction of the Muslim world before the rise of revolutionary Islamism to power and prominence: “The condition of the Muslim nation was like a wasteland in the middle of the [mid-19th century]....

Blind imitation of self-made Western laws and appreciation of foreign values had set over the lives of Muslims... whose names were no doubt Islamic but [whose] brains were West-bred.”

Notice his different angle on what for the Western author would be a tale of Western imperialism and the technological and organizational backwardness of Muslim peoples. Qaradawi does not put the emphasis on Western strength or even injustice but on Muslim weakness.

----------end article 2-----------

---------article 3--------------
From CNN

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/10/world/meast/zawahiri-peace-plan/index.html

excerpt:
The brother of al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri is proposing to mediate a peace deal between the West and Islamists.

In an exclusive interview with CNN, Mohamed al Zawahiri unveiled his proposal for the first time, saying he is in a unique position to help end the violence and that both sides need to make concessions.

As the al Qaeda leader's brother, he says they are ideologically inseparable, and that if anyone can talk his brother out of violence it's him.

He is like so many former prisoners I've met -- calm, collected, focused and utterly convinced by long held views examined, tested and re-forged in incarceration.

----------end article 3------------

So, suppose our Businessman is on a path of conversion to Islam attracted by it's core dedication to peace.  He's got to choose somehow between Shia and Sunni, and/or between Al Qaeda, Hezbolah, and Hamas, The Muslim Brotherhood, the Bathist, the Saudi wahhabism and on and on.

He comes from a Catholic background.  His notion of Christian is that there is only ONE - Catholicism is still pretty monolithic.  Protestants and Jews are used to thinking in terms of shades of gray, this ism and that ist.  Catholics might consider the Greek Orthodox in the same breath with the Pope, but not very often.

So he's looking for that certainty and clarity in Islam and not finding it.

He's probably thinking that the only way to settle this world to be friendly to business is to adopt Sharia Law, to forcibly eliminate Usury, and make the punishments so severe nobody would ever consider violating the law.

What is his secret?  What is he "in the closet" about?  What is his secret from himself?  What is he trying to pretend to be that there is no way he can be?

These great, sweeping movements that change world society - like the fleas haplessly migrating on people and animals replete with diseases - mash people like our Businessman and his lovely new Lawyer to a smear on History's Highway, or they create Great Men of History out of someone with a strategically placed Natal Pluto and a current Saturn transit.

Note that the authors of these Muslim philosophical texts wrote while in jail, as did Hitler and The Rebbe.  Lots of men hailed as "Great" because of their philosophical message's resonance with a population wrote the key work of their philosophy while in isolation, or brooded years in the solitude of a cave, wandering in the wilderness.

ISOLATION seems to have something to do with releasing these messages into the world.  Remember the fleas were released when a barrier was removed by a volcano erupting.  The release of something of great significance is often explosive in nature.

Perhaps our Businessman has grasped this pattern and has been praying to become one of those Historic Figures who releases a new philosophy into the world?

Perhaps, shocked and surprised by finding himself in jail, utterly infuriated that his long-time lawyer has deserted him, totally dismayed by who his new lawyer turns out to be (an old flame?), he suddenly realizes he is in jail.  Just as he prayed to be.

Wanting to be famous like his family always expected him to be, he suddenly sees the Divine Finger writing on his jail wall.  He belongs here because it's going to make him famous once he writes his manifesto about Islam taking over the world.  (besides, it'll sell like hotcakes, and he'll make a pile of dough, right? Business is business.)

So he wants to stay in jail.

OK, so what is his line of dialogue to his new Lawyer.

"What the hell are you doing here?  I don't want a lawyer!"

"Get the hell out of my jail cell?"

"What do you think you're doing?  I meant to cream that bastard."

"You're fired!"

"Get me an iPad!  I've got work to do."

None of those will work.  The right line of dialogue for him at that moment will reveal whatever it is that he's hiding from his new co-religionists.   It has to bespeak exactly what is eating him.

Islam has nothing against fame and glory.  Of course, they have this hierarchy with sheiks (a version of a King with power of life and death over their subjects, ruling by divine right).  Since he doesn't have the credentials to interpret the Koran, maybe (I know virtually nothing about Islam) it's somehow wrong of him to think of himself that way.  Or perhaps it's wrong of him to want to make money off what ought to be holy work?

What if he has had a sex change operation?  Would Islam still consider him female?

Or what if he is female (and his new lawyer male?), and wants to oust the all-male Islamic clergy?

Maybe the business he runs is a strip club with illegal gambling in the back room?

What is the most egregious symbol of Western life that Islamists hate?  That's the business he runs?

What could he instruct his lawyer to do that would guarantee OSHA would see to it he spent years in jail?

Maybe he's been using the strip club/gambling operation to launder money for Islamist causes, and that is what he confesses to his Lawyer and instructs her to point the investigation of his business to the evidence of what he's been doing.

That would draw out the entire proceeding and get him jailed for years, and make him a newspaper headline.  He'd have plenty of time to write the manifesto he intends to make him famous (and rich) like the rest of his family, but in such a shameful pursuit it would serve his family right for pressuring him?

Deciding to confess to money laundering would be the sort of thing done at age 29, a grand gesture and a way of striking back at those seen as causing his failure.

So the line of dialogue we're looking for is, as the shock on his face at seeing his old flame walk in, "Have I got a case for you!"

And that would be the final line of the book.  But the audience would understand all the nuances by then.

The book would be structured in two main story-lines - working toward converging in this final moment: Businessman/Religious convert and Woman Lawyer.

As you work out the details of Businessman's story, Woman Lawyer's story is generated as the obverse of his story, but at that final line of dialogue, we see her ambition fulfilled.

THEME: Fame vs. Notoriety, or maybe just World Prominence

The story is all about that inner conflict Businessman has with his famous family, and his feeling of failure and inadequacy because of it.

Note how the Jerusalem Post article (2 above) says:

Notice his different angle on what for the Western author would be a tale of Western imperialism and the technological and organizational backwardness of Muslim peoples. Qaradawi does not put the emphasis on Western strength or even injustice but on Muslim weakness.

So this story would be about how that "failure is caused by our shameful weakness" (meaning weakness in applying the tenets of Islam to daily life?) is so very attractive to this Businessman being eaten alive by his inner sense of failure.

Qaradawi's prescription for curing that sense of weakness would have a certain appeal.

But our Businessman is smart as well as hot-tempered.  He's convinced he can do better than Qawadari and Sayyid Qutb put together.  Once he's gotten himself into jail, he realizes the stuff he's been thinking and maybe even writing or blogging about can change the world.

Nothing in his life makes sense to him until New Lawyer walks into his jail cell.  Then all the pieces come together.  He gives her the story of a lifetime, and he becomes rich and famous and changes the world - makes his mark on history more indelible than the mark made by those migrating fleas.

What he sees and why will be the substance of the Lawyer's half of this story.  She has the ambition, and she has the connections.  She can get him into jail and out of it again, and she will because it fulfills her greatest ambition (a REALLY big case, one that makes Legal History, maybe international Legal History). 

So the THEME comes together in one line of DIALOGUE, a final line of the novel or film, "Have I got a case for you!" 

Find yourself a group of topics such as mentioned throughout this article, and compile them into a story.  Then do it again, and again, until you can't look at a random blog post comment and NOT see a whole novel pop up before your eyes. 

Writers look at the world from a different perspective than audiences do.  That's how you can tell if you are a writer -- or not.

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

The Power of Perseverance

Yesterday, I read an RWR interview with bestselling author Cindy Dees, the penultimate chapter of "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladstone, and something else that skips my mind. Each author had something evergreen to say about the power of perseverance.

Sometimes, the most ancient lessons are the most timeless, particularly proverbs and sayings about the power of hard work, of the determination to keep trying, and of the self-discipline involved in getting up every day ("every day" is important) earlier than ones fellows, struggling longer to solve a  seemingly impossible problem than ones rivals, putting in the extra effort to complete a task and also to do optional extra tasks, to not procrastinate, and to make good use of discretionary time.

For authors and writers, this may mean that every day is a "NaNoWriMo" day, and by hook or by crook they write 5,000 words, or whatever their goal might be.  National Novel Writing Month is November, btw.

For rice farmers (per Outliers), this might mean a 360-day, dawn-to-dusk year, with three consecutive crops.

For students, it might mean getting up an hour or two earlier than everyone else to log in extra time in libraries or on computers --or whatever the newest technologies may be-- and doing more with their vacations than chilling.

For older insights, check out Walpole's Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto, and also The Castle of Perseverance (and when I studied these works, "perseverance" was pronounced "per-SEV-er-ance" rather than "per-se-VERE-ance".)

Here is a collection of thought-provoking and inspiring quotes on the subject of perseverance.
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/perseverance

Happy Labor Day!
Rowena Cherry

The Lady Vanishes: Showing and Telling

A couple of weeks ago, PBS aired a new version of THE LADY VANISHES, previously filmed by Alfred Hitchcock. As you may remember, the story concerns a self-absorbed young Englishwoman who gets acquainted with a middle-aged, English spinster on a train in central Europe. When the woman, Miss Froy, disappears, everybody else on the train denies she ever existed. After watching the TV movie, I read the 1936 book it’s based on, THE WHEEL SPINS, by Ethel Lina White. It’s interesting to observe how the literary standards for “showing” and “telling” have changed over the decades.

The novel starts with an intriguing hook sentence: “The day before the disaster, Iris Carr had her first premonition of danger.” Then the omniscient narrator launches into two pages of exposition, telling us about idle rich orphan Iris’s background and personality, the carefree, irreverent, promiscuous “crowd” she calls her friends, and their interaction with the other patrons of the hotel in the remote European town where they’re vacationing. Although the polished writing style makes this exposition a pleasure to read, few editors would tolerate it nowadays. The author would dramatize this information in “cinematic” style, revealing it through dialogue and action the same way the movie does. It’s worth noting that some conversations dramatized in the film are written as indirect discourse in the book. (By the way, the next time you reread PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, notice how many of the conversations consist of indirect discourse rather than quoted dialogue.)

White's omniscient narrative voice reveals the thoughts and motives of other characters, and reflects on them, to a far greater extent than the movie script, which stays within Iris’s perspective most of the time. The most striking difference between book and film, though, is how the plot revelations are structured. In the movie we don’t learn the truth about Miss Froy’s existence and fate until the climax. At almost the exact middle of the book, the “black moment” when Iris decides everybody else is right and she imagined Miss Froy, the narrative shifts to England to reveal Miss Froy’s perfectly real parents and dog, eagerly awaiting her return. Later, we see Miss Froy in captivity, confirming (for the reader) the hero and heroine’s theory about her abduction long before the climactic rescue. This strategy switches the focus from Iris’s sane or deluded condition to the question of whether Miss Froy will be rescued in time to save her life. Thereby it transforms the story's genre from mystery (does Miss Froy exist, and what happened to her?) to suspense thriller (will Iris be able to find the missing woman before it’s too late?). The book and movie are equally exciting, but the movie maintains a surrealistic ambiguity the book abandons at the halfway point. It seems the author committed herself to this approach when she chose an omniscient narrative voice instead of a “tight third person” restriction to Iris’s awareness.

THE WHEEL SPINS, aka THE LADY VANISHES, is a gripping suspense adventure as well as an illustration of how an author’s decisions about voice and viewpoint interweave with the other elements of narrative.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Dialogue Part 6 - How to Write Bullshit Dialogue by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Dialogue Part 6 - How to Write Bullshit Dialogue  by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts in the Dialogue Series (yes, we'll get to "integration" of dialogue with other skills), can be found here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/dialogue-as-tool.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/12/dialogue-part-2-on-and-off-nose.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/03/dialogue-part-3-romance-erotica-vs-porn.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/08/dialogue-part-4-legal-weasel.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/11/dialogue-part-5-how-to-write-liar.html

That last one, Part 5, How to write liar dialogue, is most relevant to this post which is about something even worse than lies.

I was reading a newspaper (yeah, on paper, would you believe?) recently, in which I ran across two opinion pieces about diverse topics.  Each hung their main point on a non-fiction book.

I thought it interesting that one article pointed to the book, saying that there is something WORSE than lying, and that from the explanation I agreed! 

For the most part, you can't use this method to create dialogue because dialogue is not "speech" per se, not a simple transcription of the way people talk, but must be terse, to the point, off the nose, and  not be the author talking to the reader, but one character talking to another character.

However, when searching for a way to SHOW DON'T TELL a) the nature of a character and b) the gullibility of another character that will lead them into serious trouble, this method of dialogue generation will work very well.

Here's the book:



The thesis is that liars know the truth and are trying to cover it up, misdirect you, or otherwise convince you that the truth is not true.

Bullshitters, on the other hand, don't necessarily know the truth, and really couldn't care less what is true and what is not true.  Bullshitters are ramming their agenda into your head by saying whatever will make you do what they want you to do, regardless of whether it will benefit you, or even the bullshitter. 

The article also pointed out that the originator(s) of the bullshit dialogue may actually know it's not true, even if they don't know what the truth really is.  But those who have been bullshitted, and somehow absorb the message and become advocates of it, repeat the bullshit without fact-checking, without knowing the truth, and very possibly without knowing what agenda they are pushing!

Like gossip, bullshit takes on a life of its own.

As a result, a fiction writer can use this method of speech, discussed in the book above, to set up a plot involving character assassination.  Like a murder mystery, a character-assassination plot would have a FORM -- open form mystery, or closed form mystery.

In open form, the reader sees in the first scene who-done-it (if not how and why), and in closed form, the reader has to unravel the mystery with the detective.

Envision trying to use this "bullshit" method on Colombo -- or say, in current TV shows, Longmire.



I love Longmire's hat, and the way the camera director uses it.  But I love the underlying values of the heroic portrayal of this rural, 21st century, sheriff.  I love the modern Indian reservation and all their (rather authentic) modern day politics.  Longmire is a great show to watch -- and well written enough to learn dialogue writing by studying it, scene for scene.

So, no, a criminal is not going to get away with bullshitting Longmire!  (or Colombo).

You can also use this bullshit dialogue methodology to portray the various sides of the thematic issue you are using at the core of your composition. 

Use this blog's search-tool (on the right) to search for theme, and you'll get a lot of theme posts.  I have to make a long index of them eventually. 

The point I make in most of those posts on theme is that it is important to understand your theme, and to create characters who really believe (down to the core of their being) each side of the current arguments on that point in our current culture.

You can't fake it. 

You must actually understand where the people who loathe your own personal point of view are coming from, and for that little while that you are writing the dialogue of that character, you must be able to believe it.  Yes, it's kind of like "method acting."  You have to walk a mile in the moccasins of the characters who shun and despise your personal views, and argue their side of the matter with the character who is representing your view.

The best novels are the ones where there is no character who represents the author's personal views -- so there's no ax-grinding or polemics, no preaching, just good drama.

Which brings us to the second book I found mentioned in a printed on paper newspaper.

I wouldn't have noticed this book except for the roiling and embroiling issues raised by the SFWA Bulletin controversy, sparked by a hapless writer's blogpost (in ignorance of the SFWA issue), and then brought to sharp focus by Ann Aguirre's blog post which drew an instant splashback of several true "hate-speech" emails.  Yeah, Ann Aguirre drew hatespeech! 

Here's what I posted about this, which contains links so you can research this anti-SFR matter:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/theme-conflict-integration-part-1.html

So the following Friday, there was a #scifichat on twitter about the eruption of sexism in the science fiction community, and everyone was perfectly civil, used regular English, and tossed around some really thoughtful opinions.

It was astonishing how DIFFERENT the tone was.  The folks on #scifichat talk like the Science Fiction fans I grew up with and have known all my life.  The people directing hate at Ann Aguirre's blog post did not sound like anyone I'd ever met, and the stories the commenters brought to light of their own experiences likewise sounded like encounters out of the twilight zone.

So when I saw this article on an epidemic of hate online, and I remembered some of the nonsense language posts I've seen in comments on news articles (such as on Yahoo news, and other news posts that allow comments), I realized hate online could be viewed as an "epidemic."   These hate-language users represent one of those opinions I keep telling you that you need to include where appropriate in a story -- to use characters to present beliefs that you do not hold personally.

Here's the book on amazon:



Here's the blurb on Amazon:
Emboldened by anonymity, individuals and organizations from both left and right are freely spewing hateful vitriol on the Internet without worrying about repercussions. Lies, bullying, conspiracy theories, bigoted and racist rants, and calls for violence targeting the most vulnerable circulate openly on the web. And thanks to the guarantees of the First Amendment and the borderless nature of the Internet, governing bodies are largely helpless to control this massive assault on human dignity and safety. Abe Foxman and Christopher Wolf expose the threat that this unregulated flow of bigotry poses to the world. They explore how social media companies like Facebook and YouTube, as well as search engine giant Google, are struggling to reconcile the demands of business with freedom of speech and the disturbing threat posed by today’s purveyors of hate. And they explain the best tools available to citizens, parents, educators, law enforcement officers, and policy makers to protect the twin values of transparency and responsibility. As Foxman and Wolf show, only an aroused and engaged citizenry can stop the hate contagion before it spirals out of control—with potentially disastrous results. 

Note how many 1-star reviews it has pulled.  1-star is "I hate it." 

Look at Ann Aguirre's post (which has made her some new fans and readers!)

http://www.annaguirre.com/archives/2013/06/02/this-week-in-sf/

Look at the splashback emails she posted right at the end of her item. 

This newspaper article advanced the theory that the hatespeech you are seeing flood online venues is coming MOSTLY (not exclusively) from teenagers, and that parents need to police their teen's online behavior better to stop it.

I don't know if there's any value to that suggestion, or any truth at all to the allegation that it's teens -- but wouldn't it be (fictionally) interesting if the hate-email Ann Aguirre got wasn't from any professionals, active fans such as frequent #scifichat, or adults with considered opinions who are ticked off by the skyrocketing sales of SFR compared to the shrinking and shriveling sales of nuts-n-bolts SF?  What if she just hit a network of teens who love to "vandalize" blogposts with hatespeech and really have no idea what the subject actually is (and don't have the education to understand it even if someone explained it to them?)

Now that would make a CONFLICT for a novel -- and there's a theme integrated right into that conflict.  A Setting of Parenting -- especially single-parent parenting (the article I read pointed to single-parents who don't have TIME to police their kids)?

Can you see the various sides of the argument and how it fits into a Romance?

A woman struggling her way up in a traditionally mans' world profession, -- say widowed when her husband was killed in Iraq? -- and raising kids by herself.  Suitor #1 who has bought into the idea that single-parenting produces wayward kids.  Suitor #2 advocating casual live-together, but admiring her parenting skills - maybe more than her professional skills?  Which will she choose?  Or will she look for Suitor #3?  Or go the SINGLE route? 

Anyone watching THE GLADES?  Highly recommended -- not SF, but Detective Mystery -- Mystery-Romance.  Shows a man falling in love with a woman-single-parent-medical-student.



This issue - A Woman's Place In The World - and maybe even the very definition of woman and of "mother" - is under furious discussion in our world today, and criss-crosses the Religion borders like crazy.

This is a venue where you can set up any number of Romance Novels plotted around really hot screaming fights (Bullshit dialogue, Liar dialogue, Hatespeech dialogue) liberally laced with sex scenes.

In fact, such screaming fights would tend (in certain cultures) to skip from language to language.

Remember I LOVE LUCY, where Ricki shifts to Spanish when he gets mad?



Who are the really "hot" immigrants today?  What language to they shift into when exasperated? 

Remember, The Newcomers in Alien Nation?  There was Newcomer kid who as a teen became aculturated to Earth and joined a gang -- got himself in lots of trouble with his traditional parents for his LANGUAGE USE.




Now think about all this, and think about the hatespeech directed at Ann Aguirre not as anything to do with her work (those who HATE like that probably haven't read her books which are full of love overcoming the ugliest sides of our violent culture) -- but think of it as being a bigger problem that your readers are encountering in a lot of environments as they struggle to deal with things like being a single parent -- or dealing with kids of single parents who just aren't being properly parented, or some who are better parented than those from two-parent households.

Think of your broadest possible reach as a writer -- and see what you can do applying these dialogue techniques.

Try the classic exercise of putting two characters you know nothing about in a pitch black, can't see or touch each other, environment (a prison, a cave, an elevator in a blackout), and let them just TALK to each other.  All you have on your page is DIALOGUE - quotes, without description, just the names of the characters and all you can describe them with is what they say.

In fact, the classic-classic exercise is to write such a two-character dialogue without names, but just speech that is so distinctive the reader can tell who's talking without he-said, she-said.  In fact, one exercise is to write such an exchange in such a way that the reader can figure out which one is male and which female, without being told.

Read these books, look at these TV shows, all the while having in mind that you are going to use what you learn to construct such a "limbo set" dialogue exercise.

If you do this read/view/write exercise with enough determination, you may find yourself with the core scene of a dynamite novel.  But start first with the conversation in the dark exercise.  It's tough, but you'll learn a lot about the difference between dialogue and everyday talking.  This would work with a telephone conversation, too -- no videochat, just voice. 

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Intimate Adventure with Clay and Fire

I’ve just read one of the best historical fantasies I’ve ever come across, THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI, by Helene Wecker. (Amazingly, it’s the author’s first novel.)

The Golem and the Jinni

Both of the title characters are involuntary immigrants adrift in New York in 1899. The owner of the golem, Chava, died on the ship to America, leaving her masterless. The jinni, Ahmad, accidentally released from an antique copper flask, suffers under a curse cast centuries earlier in circumstances he can’t remember; an iron band on his arm traps him in human form and curtails some of his other powers. To survive in their new home, both must learn to live within human society, beginning with acceptance of the mundane names bestowed by the people who take them in. At first forced to adapt to human customs as camouflage, little by little Chava and Ahmad begin to internalize human behavior and feel emotions new to them.

These two creatures, one of earth (clay) and one of fire, meet by chance and become friends because they share a sense of being out of place in the mundane life of the city. Neither one sleeps, and their first meeting occurs during their nocturnal wanderings through the streets of New York. They can’t reveal the full truth of their natures to anyone but each other. They’re opposites in more ways than their elemental origins: The golem, created to serve a master’s needs, is driven to be useful, happiest when ceaselessly working, and restless without somebody to obey. The jinni, raging against the slavery to which he was bound against his will, is arrogant, volatile, averse to commitment, and often scornful of the mere mortals around him. Both have to keep secrets for their own safety. Yet both eventually form true friendships with some of the people they live among. Little by little, they learn about love—love of many varieties, not only romantic or erotic. Finally, for the welfare of their human companions, they take the risk of exposing their true natures, and both make sacrifices for those they care about. Chava learns to become an independent being, and Ahmad learns to serve the needs of others. This story is an outstanding example of Intimate Adventure.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Conflict Integration Part 1 Battle of the Sexes by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Conflict Integration Part 1 Battle of the Sexes

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Buzzing through the June 2013 kerfuffle started by a SFWA Bulletin cover (classic brass bras Warrior Woman image) and a blog post that ignited another explosion in the sexism wars, I've been surveying some of the blog entries by both men and women writers on the acceptance of SFR by SF writers. 

And of course, every day I spend a bit of time watching the TV news -- just for fun and inspiration.

And suddenly while watching the news after viewing an episode of NBC's J. J. Abrams REVOLUTION, the world flipped into a new focus. 

It was one of those "artist's eye" things I've been talking about here since I started discussing writing craft techniques one at a time.  (yes, we'll get to three at a time!). 

And I went, AHA!!! -- that's THEME-CONFLICT INTEGRATION!!! 

Trying to explain what I saw in a) our fictional environment b) our (allegedly) real world environment and c) our writer's marketing environment --- all three integrated, BANG in one 3-D vision -- is going to be a serious challenge.

But if you can grasp what I'm saying, then look at your world from your own personal point of view, you may become the one to launch this enormous breakthrough novel/film that we've been envisioning on this blog since I began the writing craft series here.

So you may want to review some of the elementary posts on structure, and where conflict fits into it all.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-2-master.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-3-game.html

There are hardly any posts I've done that don't involve the use of conflict to generate the plot (and everything else in a Romance Novel).

But you might want to review these:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/06/finding-story-opening-part-1-action-vs.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/06/finding-story-opening-part-2-avatar-and.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/plot-vs-story.html

Conflict is absolutely the hardest thing for writers to master.  Women have the hardest time with it, but I've seen men writers who just can't "get it" either.  It's a blind-spot common to both genders at the beginning of the learning curve.

Once you get conflict, you start selling even if your stuff is really bad, an embarrassment so bad that eventually you adopt another pen name because you don't want your current stuff associated with that old stuff.

Conflict is the essence of story, and has been since the beginning of story-telling as an art-form (think cave man fireside entertainment).

And yet, it is very hard to learn how to go about arranging the distinctive elements of your story around a core of a conflict to create a plot.

You know it when you see it in a novel or movie, and you love it, every time.  CONFLICT - WORKING OUT - RESOLUTION.  That is a highly commercial winning sequence every time, regardless of the content.

However, there is "throw away" entertainment -- what they once called "the pulps" -- cheaply produced magazines to read and toss, and there is classic literature.

The error that we, as Science Fiction Romance writers, have been trying to correct is the assumption that Romance is "pulp" and only pulp.  The assumption is that Romance is suitable only for lining bird cages and wrapping dead fish.  Oddly, that was always the assumption about science fiction.  Hmmm. 

It is an unconscious assumption, and our entire civilization is founded upon it. 

Once you see that manifesting in TV News, popular TV Series, and heated blog controversies over "sexism" you understand that we've been had.  Big time.

Like Science Fiction, Westerns, and many other genres so disparaged, Romance is not now and never has been "throw away" literature.  It is CLASSIC by it's very nature.

That fact is so terrifying that it is buried in the subconscious (Neptune, Pisces -- the best horror genre novels are fabricated out of NEPTUNE EVENTS (illusion) just as Romance Genre pivots on a Neptune Transit).  Buried in the collective subconscious, that fact about Romance being Classic Literature by its very nature is left to suppurate and rot us all out from the inside.

Do you see how I've taken a CONFLICT (the battle of the sexes over the prestige of Romance Genre) and edged it over into a THEME? 

Read the series of posts on Theme-Character Integration:

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/07/theme-character-integration-part-2-fire.html

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/theme-character-integration-part-4.html

The process I just demonstrated, extracting a theme from a mishmosh of something else is discussed in those theme-character posts as is the crafting of the ending of a novel. 

The ending is the point in time where the theme is rammed down the character's throat and becomes totally assimilated, thus ending the story.  The ram is the Plot.  At the ending of a story, plot and story become indistinguishable.  That's how you know you are at an ending. 

One of the most often repeated errors beginning writers make is to start at the end.  And that's why beginners often can't grasp the difference between story and plot. 

To find the beginning of a story, you must train yourself to think backwards from an ending or a middle that first occurs to you to find the place in the story-arc where the story and the plot both begin.

And that same kind of backwards, inside-out thinking is useful in extracting a theme from "the world" as it exists in a mishmosh.

I had immediately noticed that the SFWA Bulletin cover controversy hit critical mass when the simple blog post
http://www.thestoryhub.ca/talking-sci-fi-romance/
ignited a firestorm.

And the firestorm was all about sexism -- in the SF community, and in the world in general.

Many horror stories emerged via comments on Ann Aguirre's simple and factual post about her experiences in associating with SF writers:
http://www.annaguirre.com/archives/2013/06/02/this-week-in-sf/

And the conversation became laced with outrage over sexism.  All the old tropes were trotted out for an aria or two center stage.  People complained that the same-old-same-old discussion was boring.

It is boring. 

As Theodore Sturgeon pointed out many decades ago, writing science fiction is all about training your mind to ASK THE NEXT QUESTION.  Don't just accept what is said.  Question everything.

That's how art (all fields) is done, and that is the drill that produces (a few times in a lifetime) those moments such as I described above where everything flipped into focus, AHA!  (such as when a character reaches THE END of the novel and the theme is rammed home by the plot events intruding into the story.)

People commented on the blogs with comparisons to 1953 -- saying that the women's movement had won in the 1970's so why are we fighting this battle over again?  And others commented on that view saying things like we just have to wait for the old guys to die off -- or we have to fire them. 

And others insisted this is a NEW WORLD.  Everything's changed (which I've been pointing out on this blog for a while now) and we won, we defeated the ugly monster of sexism, so therefore it is gone.  Why is it still here?

While reading commentary along those lines, I was thinking about J. J. Abrams (and the Star Trek movie, Star Trek: Into Darkness which I discussed here
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/07/theme-plot-integration-part-11-correct.html

And I was thinking of J. J. Abrams TV Series Revolution, and the news of the day (wall-to-wall-scandals lightly laced with murder trials and fresh new murders), and I was thinking of how we choose our (scandal prone) politicians for their sexy TV images rather than boring desk-jockey skills, and the next question occurred to me.

What if there is not now and never has been any such thing as a Battle of the Sexes?

That could explain why it is absolutely "un-winnable."  It does not exist.  It is an illusion of Neptune.

If you haven't read the posts on Astrology Just For Writers -- the whole Neptune and Pluto relevance is explained in these posts which are listed in this post:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

Note the fellow who claimed responsibility for the NSA security leak involving data collection is a 29 year old.  That's the year of the Saturn Return (when Saturn gets back to the place it was when you were born -- happens to everyone at that age, and every 29 years thereafter).  The first Saturn Return is notorious for having certain kinds of dramatic effects (being an Ending and a Beginning just like in novels). 

Knowing the clues in those posts on Astrology makes character creation and plotting very easy.

This Question -- what if ...?  Is the core-essence of Science Fiction.  Thinking out of the box, daring to ask the un-askable, the un-thinkable. 

It is an unthinkable question because throughout recorded history, and as far as anyone can tell from pre-history, males and females have always been at war, and we all accept without question that sex and violence are related.  There must be dominance in sex, right?  Must! 

Throughout the Middle Ages (the model for so much Fantasy-Romance with Kings, Queens, handsome Dukes, etc.) The Church kept women subjugated because of the story of Adam and Eve, which (to them) clearly says Eve was a bitch who tricked Adam, and therefore all women are Evil.

In the USA, we had to fight (FIGHT!!!) for the right to vote, have a bank account in our own name, etc. etc. 

Now the fight is over abortion, equality in marriage, and equal pay for equal work.

Where does it end?  What does Victory actually look like? 

This Battle of the Sexes is like the wars in the Middle East where we hammered two countries to smitherines, then tried to get soldiers who specialize in killing people to "nation build."  And then we leave, unilaterally proclaiming victory.  Huh? 

They coined a phrase to describe this process that we see in The Battle Of The Sexes.  Mission Creep.  Politicians call it "Progressivism" -- and I call them scam artists (like guys who just want to get you into bed, and leave when they get bored).  Move on dot Sex! 

I discussed grifters a little bit here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/02/tv-shows-leverage-and-psych.html

It's a scam.  The Battle of the Sexes is a scam just like on the TV Series Leverage -- a 21st Century version of the old Mission: Impossible.   

One of the principles of running a game on a mark is that you must rivet the mark's attention AWAY FROM what you're doing -- like a stage magician, prestidigitation. 

To do this, you create a problem for them -- it's not real, it doesn't exist, so it can't be solved, but while they're busy trying to solve it with increasing urgency as you "play" them, you have a clear field to steal everything they have.

In the case of the Battle of the Sexes, what is being stolen is Identity. 

Your strength, your ability to cope with the world and stay alive in it, is based on your sense of individuality.  Take that away, and you are helpless - a mark ripe for the grifter's art.

If you want to understand the world: Follow The Money.

Or to solve a Murder Mystery, find out who benefits from the death.  Motive; Method; Opportunity.

Our mystery is Who Is Running This Scam? 

Apparently, both males and females are the Marks.  So who's the Identity Thief?

Who's playing "Let's You And Him Fight?" 



Someone is cleaning up, big time.  Bet on it.

Money, as I discussed in the Tarot Just For Writers posts, is a form of Power. 

Here are the Tarot posts in case you missed them.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_23.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me.html

To understand power intoxication, read this non-fiction book I reviewed in depth under DIALOGUE titled How To Write Liar Dialogue:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/11/dialogue-part-5-how-to-write-liar.html

The principle used by the best grifters is that the mark must never know he's being played until the coups.  Then he falls down to the mud, head spinning, utterly paralyzed with the realization that he's been had.

Are we there yet? 

Are we aware we been had? 

Because that's THE END of this novel -- that's the point where the theme is rammed home into the guts of the story by the ram of the plot events.

Or are we waking up in the middle of the scam, not yet had, not YET fleeced?  Do we have a chance to turn the tables?

There's a massive, blockbuster Romance theme in that idea of turning the tables on the grifter running The Battle of the Sexes, but if you try to write it outside SFR or Paranormal Romance, you will have a hard time selling it -- because it will be deemed implausible. 

If you don't think The Battle of the Sexes is a scam yet, find another explanation for the entire kerfuffle over that SFWA Bulletin cover and a reasonably innocent blog post by a guy who apparently is being played by the grifters behind this thing. 

Why is the Battle of the Sexes unwinnable if it is a battle at all and not a scam?

If it isn't a setup, if we're not being had, then what would the world be like after one side or the other WINS? 

Post-apocalyptic is very popular right now -- J. J. Abrams TV Series, REVOLUTION being only one of many examples.  Think of all the zombie stuff that nearly took over the world.  We are obsessed with "what will happen after all this falls apart?" 

What if the apocalypse is not vampires, zombies, werewolves, EM Pulse attacks, nano-whatevers?  What if the apocalypse is "we been had."  What happens after that?

Here are some comments I made online that convinced me to try to start this Theme-Conflict Integration series now instead of next year. 

http://www.facebook.com/groups/130939813657941/permalink/469377513147501/

Jacqueline Lichtenberg: If there really is no difference in capability and potential, in respect due for accomplishment, between male & female humans, then why is every comment on this issue based on the assumption that there is a difference? If we believe what we're preaching, we should behave accordingly. There IS NO SUCH THING as "sexism" because it's based on a false premise. So to "fight back" as if the enemy has a case is to legitimize that case. We shouldn't be fighting. We should be explaining, as Starla Huchton pointed out -- because THEY HAVE NO CLUE WHAT THEY'RE DOING WRONG.


Jacqueline Lichtenberg: Consider the 'glass houses' issue, and first ask yourself what WE are doing wrong. Certainly we can't be entirely correct on every underlying issue in the SF vs SFR confrontation? Find the hole in our argument, fix it, then explain to "them" where the hole is in their argument. We should do a workshop at a con where everyone has read the same pair of novels demonstrating the dichotomy, and explain where both sides are right, and where both sides are making errors.


Jacqueline Lichtenberg: Look on Ann Aguirre's blog entry comment 387 by Carole Ann. She is from the UK. CONSIDER women are proven just as capable of being techs, and we read the SF-war-stories just as avidly, love ACTION (there is such a thing as action-romance, I hope you've noticed!), and we have attracted a number of men into reading, writing and discussing SFR. Think about what Carole Ann told us in that comment -- How can you win a "war of the sexes" and it not be a Pyrrhic Victory? The whole point of Romance is men and women love each other, fit together, make dynamite teams. Somewhere in History someone suckered us into thinking in terms of War. Do we have to let "them" (whoever they were) set our agenda? http://www.annaguirre.com/archives/2013/06/02/this-week-in-sf/

And from Gini Koch's blog
http://www.sliceofscifi.com/2013/06/06/its-time/ 

Gini Koch says she has nothing to prove, and I think she's nailed it.  There is no controversy, there is no war of the sexes, there is NO CONFLICT here and thus NO STORY.

by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Killing Characters

I finally got around to reading THE GAME OF THRONES (and watching the first episode of the TV series). You’ve probably heard the joke that goes, “George Martin’s Twitter account got canceled because he killed off all 140 characters,” and from only the first installment of the series, I understand the joke. How do you feel about the deaths of major characters? Not in a work labeled as tragedy, where it’s expected, but in other kinds of dramatic fiction? Sometimes letting a protagonist meet a heroic end works, as in THE ROBE, where Christian converts Marcus and Diana joyfully embrace martyrdom on the final page. However, that kind of scenario violates most readers’ expectations of most novels.

Lots of people die in GONE WITH THE WIND (after all, much of it takes place during a war), including Melanie, a major character. She’s still a secondary character, though, and her death has a critical, plot-justified impact on the development of Scarlett, the protagonist. I had a different feeling about the death of Duncan’s beloved Tessa in the HIGHLANDER TV series. Not that I couldn’t accept having the hero’s lover die as a contribution to his character development, but that her fate was so pointless. Immediately after getting rescued from the villain, she got murdered in a mugging. This incident was probably intended to reflect the randomness of real life, but I found it dramatically unsatisfying. J. K. Rowling killed Harry Potter, but not really. If Harry’s sacrifice had resulted in his permanent death, readers would have been outraged—justly, in my opinion. In a seven-book saga centered on a single protagonist, the author has an implied contract with the audience to reward the hero’s efforts and sufferings. How about a novel with an ensemble cast, such as GAME OF THRONES? I was shocked when the closest that novel has to a main protagonist, and one of the few thoroughly admirable persons in the cast of characters, got killed off at the whim of a tyrant. (I won’t go into further detail in case you haven’t read the book.)

In a “nobody is safe” fictional universe, do you appreciate the realism of knowing anybody can die, just as in real life? Or does the death of a central character turn a book into a wall-banger for you?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Character Integration Part 4 - Selecting a Setting by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Character Integration Part 4 - Selecting a Setting 

 by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Below you will find 8 steps to Selecting a Setting.


From the Amazon Vine program, I got a pre-publication proof copy of   QUEEN OF THE AIR, a True Story of Love & Tragedy at the Circus, by Dean Jensen, published by Crown.




I chose it partially because I remembered the posts we've had here on Setting:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/04/guest-post-by-j-h-bogran-settings-part-1.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/04/settings-part-2.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/04/settings-part-3-dreamspy-in-e-book.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/06/settings-part-4-detail-guest-post-by-j.html

I selected this nonfiction book from the books offered by Amazon for review because I've long been a circus fan.  One of my first ambitions (like maybe 5 years old?) was to be a circus flyer, but I was told that you could only be that if your parents were and you were born into it. 

That was not exactly untrue.  There is a genetic disposition that underlies acrobatic talent, and the Circus was and still is a difficult society to break into. 

So many years later, when Marion Zimmer Bradley took me on as a writing student, and I mentioned CIRCUS as a passion, and my (as yet un-realized) ambition to create a brand new circus act which could only be appreciated by interstellar audiences, she revealed a project to me that she had been working on for about 20 years.

I've talked about MZB a great deal here, and I've mentioned this book many times, so I'm going to assume most of you have read it by now.



MZB used the various drafts of her circus novel (working title Flyers -- ultimately the publisher required the title change) to teach me many, many craft tricks that I'm passing on to you here.  But I had not thought of the connection between this discussion of Theme-Character integration and Catchtrap until I was more than half way through Queen of the Air.

Reading this new non-fiction circus history that covers the same time-period that Catchtrap does, and summarizes and presents the exact same source material that Marion used (and which I dug into as I was studying her drafts), I suddenly realized that put together the non-fiction and the novel, illustrate exactly what I've been talking about in the Theme-Character Integration series.

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/07/theme-character-integration-part-2-fire.html

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

I pointed out that I've been using an analysis of novel structure that distinguishes sharply between Story and Plot. 

All professional writers that I know use this distinction habitually, and exactly as I do, exactly as I was taught by writers and editors.  It's just that everyone calls the working parts of a novel by different terms, so new writers are always confused.

A finished work has these parts blended and integrated so deeply that the reader can not tease them apart to see how the parts were put together in the first place.  A finished novel is an iPhone -- you can't get the case open, but it makes pretty pictures on the front! 

So when a new writer gets "an idea for a novel" and just can see the whole finished product in their mind, they don't know what to do to achieve that exact novel.  They know what they want to write will be exactly like the other books on the market, maybe like some best sellers, yet different, distinctively better!  But now, looking at a blank screen, what WORDS DO YOU PUT DOWN to make people see your story the way you do?

This is a difficult and discouraging moment for beginning writers. 

The answer is to take those marvelous novels that you've reread so often, that you want to write a book that will be better than, and analyze them for the component parts.  You have to destroy the novel, take the cover off, take a microscope and pick the parts out with micro-tweezers and find out where the parts came from.

In these advanced craft posts titled Theme-something-integration, I've been showing you how to RIP A THEME FROM THE HEADLINES, to grab some epic story that exemplifies the issues and angst of the current times and cast it into a NOVEL. 

And as I've been showing you this process, I have not once thought that I learned it from Marion Zimmer Bradley while studying her early drafts of FLYERS. 

FLYERS became CATCHTRAP and burst on the scene, became a best seller, and opened many amazing doors to MZB's other non-SF, somewhat fantasy, writing.  MISTS OF AVALON followed, "the women of King Arthur) and became a made-for-TV movie and spawned sequels.  MZB's struggle with Catchtrap paid off big time.  She got the idea for Catchtrap from "The Headlines" I've been telling you to mine for theme.  And those headlines are delineated and summarized in the new non-fiction book Queen of the Air. 

Watching MZB struggle to turn FLYERS into CATCHTRAP is probably not the first place I learned to mine the headlines, but it is where the techniques finally came to vibrant life inside my own mind. 

MZB did not set out to teach me this.  Not on purpose.  Mostly because she didn't know she knew. 

She was a supremely talented writer.  She was born able to just do these things.  She was writing and even started selling in her twenties.  She just jumped in and started producing words -- lots and lots of words, most of which didn't say anything, but painted a picture. 

Her assault on the project of creating this circus novel was the same. 

She wrote lots of character sketches and scenes where people just talk to each other but nothing happens.  Then she extracted, cut and tightened, focused and re-focused the theme without consciously thinking about it.  She often didn't know the theme of a novel she had written until she reread it years later.  Most of her books were written in a few months, sent in, published and that was that.  CATCHTRAP as I said was written and rewritten over 20 years (as were a couple other projects that weren't SF or Fantasy). 

Remember that I've pointed out in this Theme-Character integration series that Character is about the story -- and the plot is external, about the events that happen TO the character.

Because the events that happen to the character are caused by the character's actions which come from the character's decisions, which are often based on emotions triggered or focused (but not caused) by something another character did -- because the events are "integrated" into the character like that, it is very difficult to tease apart a finished work and say "this belongs to the story" and "this belongs to the plot."

Story and Plot when you're finished have to be almost the same thing.

But when you're trying to sort out what you want to write in your own mind, when you're facing that blank screen, you may need to know the difference between story, plot and theme, in order to figure out where to start. 

Before you can figure out where in your character's life his story starts, you sometimes need to have an idea of where (in the world or out of it) the character IS.  (i.e. you need a SETTING.)

Now previously, I pointed out that a novel ends where the Main Character (Point of View character) is finally and definitively impacted by the LESSON stated by the THEME. 

When the PLOT EVENTS drive the THEME home into the character's inner-mind and ram their way into the STORY, you have come to THE END (and should stop writing; many new writers miss that point because the opening is in the wrong point in the character's life).

To create such an explosive ending, clarify the theme in your own mind.  State it as a lesson the characters are presented with, reject, run from, flee at all costs, bankrupt themselves trying to avoid, and finally - finally-finally -- have to stand there and absorb the impact of THE TRUTH.

OK, so now read QUEEN OF THE AIR.

Now re-read CATCHTRAP.  (you can skim real fast if you've read it before).

And here's what I saw reprising the historical facts I'd learned while studying FLYERS being transformed into CATCHTRAP. 

MZB was as taken by "Circus" as an artform as I was, probably at a similar age.  She dug up the history from before she was born and from when she was a little girl, and just absorbed the HEADLINES.

She zeroed in on what makes a circus STAR -- what captures audience imagination -- and focused on the history of the flying trapeze (which actually isn't all that long!)

She distilled out of the headlines and the gossip-stories about flying stars (Cordona in particular) a THEME -- a thesis, a lesson, a reality that her characters would deny and then finally have to accept.

That theme was embodied by the idea that the fueling essence of what makes A STAR -- (in any type of stagecraft, but particularly exemplified in FLYING) -- is sexuality.  Not especially sex-appeal, but the driving force of ART IN GENERAL is sexuality.

That's the theme ript from the headlines.  (read QUEEN OF THE AIR, really!)

The non-fiction book does not dig that deep into the material, but all the clues MZB discovered prying this stuff out of newspaper accounts and magazine articles are just laying there on the surface of the events described in this historical summary of Cordona's making the Triple the eye-popping feature of RINGLING BROTHERS BARNUM AND BAILEY CIRCUS.

MZB's corollary to this is that there are those who invent tricks, and those who perfect tricks.

I've found that to be true throughout all the Arts! 

It's not "sex sells"  -- in fact, I would argue that sex doesn't sell, and publishing and TV/movies are about to discover that. 

It's not sex that appeals to audiences.  It's ART that appeals to audiences.

Raw life-force of sexuality fuels the ART that appeals to audiences.  That fuel source is what distinguishes some art from other art.  The type of art fueled by sexuality's life-force is the type that rockets to the top of the charts.  

ART SELLS -- sexuality is the rocket fuel that causes art to be created. 

The trick that has been "invented" is to rip the veneer off the Art and reveal the underlying raw sexuality.  But how much fun is an iPhone you've busted the cover off of? 

The next step, the next big blockbuster (and it could be a Science Fiction Romance Novel!) will perfect that trick -- will make it repeatable and explosively popular.  Sexual-power will become more sellable when the audience can't see how the trick is performed.

How much fun is it to read a plot-outline?  To read a story-outline?  A Beat Sheet? 

There are peculiar people like you and me who get their jollies out of playing with these component pieces, but most people like their entertainment integrated, that is, they  like their iPhone to have a cover and a pretty picture on the screen, with nice clear sound, rather than have all the components laid out across a desk top one tiny, nearly invisible piece after another. 

To stick with the iPhone analogy, consider that the electricity stored inside the battery is the sex, the picture on the screen is what we buy the device for.  Without the well charged battery connected to all the components, the device is pretty useless.  But when fully charged, that device is sexy as hell.  (OK, there are other brands perfecting that trick, and like tantric sex, they have longer lasting batteries.)

So in the creation of a Best Selling Novel, you start with something that catches your attention in today's HEADLINES.  (for MZB that was circus flying, but any topic that intrigues you will do). 

1) rip your topic from the headlines (separate it from reality)
2) research it's history in depth in reality
3) figure out WHY IT INTRIGUES YOU -- why is theme, theme is lesson
4) figure out what lesson you, as an ARTIST, see that others don't see
5) clarify a statement of the lesson you see ( Sexuality is driving force of Art was MZB's)
6) Take those real people (as MZB took Codona) and re-imagine them as Characters who can and must learn this lesson you have discovered (separate your Character from the reality of the people).
7) Find the setting that makes it necessary and inevitable for that Character to learn This Lesson.
8) TEACH YOUR CHARACTER HIS LESSON 

To achieve step 8, use the SETTING to generate the EVENTS of the PLOT that will ram the lesson home into the character's story.

That's why choice of SETTING is important, and it is not arbitrary or random.  Setting is not an independent variable.  Change the setting, and you change the genre, which can change the theme.

MZB chose CIRCUS as the backdrop for a story that had to do with explaining to non-artist readers what it is about ART that drives individuals to take risks, to live cheap and poor, to refuse to give up doing what they do just because others reject them.

When separated from his Art, the Artist whithers away to dust as a character, becoming directionless, and making choices that are obviously disastrous but just not caring about the results of those choices. 

The only thing that matters in life is that Art, and that Art (and thus life) can't exist without that sexual fuel. 

If you compare QUEEN OF THE AIR with CATCHTRAP you will see, almost point for point (including the relationship between circus flying and movies, stunt doubling, etc etc) exactly where MZB got her best seller material, and how she changed that material to be unrecognizable yet identical.

Very possibly, the most important thing you can learn by a close comparison of these two books is how to make a thematic point off the nose, how to say it without saying it, how to show-don't-tell, and still be abundantly clear about what you are saying.

Characters, like people, learn their lessons best when they have no clue what they've learned.

by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Who Is a Fan?

Recently one of my e-mail lists had a discussion about whether the same person can be both a fan and a scholar of a particular area of fantasy, SF, etc. The consensus was that a scholar can definitely also be a fan. But the list didn’t reach a consensus on what makes someone a fan.

The stereotype that “fan” implies uncritical enthusiasm was quickly disproved. As several people pointed out, fandom often involves encyclopedic knowledge of an author, TV series, etc., and fans notoriously enjoy nitpicking inconsistencies and other defects in their beloved material. And fan publications can feature in-depth analysis as insightful as any academic article.

So what defines a “fan,” as opposed to someone who enjoys a certain body of work but wouldn’t claim that designation? (A member of my family recently remarked about a TV show he’s fond of that he considers himself a fan of it but “not a FAN.”) Is it enough to have watched every episode of a program or read every book in a series? Does one have to pore over the material repeatedly and learn the plots and characters well enough to pass a trivia contest? Or is a true fan someone who engages in fannish activities such as reading fanzines, writing fanfic, and attending conventions?

I’d say it’s up to each individual, regardless of defined categories, whether to identify himself or herself as a fan. Many people, however, recognize different levels of involvement as the threshold for that self-identification. Where do you locate that boundary?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Character Integration Part 3 - Why Did Spock Become Popular

Theme-Character Integration Part 3 - Why Did Spock Become Popular

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Last week, in the context of the criticism of Science Fiction Romance novels,  we looked at the TV Series Vampire Diaries, a Fantasy, and Gray's Anatomy, a mundane Series, so now let's look into a Science Fiction series.  Of course, Star Trek leaps to mind.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/07/theme-character-integration-part-2-fire.html

Part 1 of this skill integration sequence is here:

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

Previously we discussed What Does She See In Him (an essential ingredient in firing up a love life)

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-does-she-see-in-him.html

Note there is a rising attempt by David Gerrold and many folks long involved in the series to create a new Star Trek TV Series, and it's rolling along, even though it fell just short of it's Kickstarter goal.

Here is the Kickstarter for Star Wolf email sent out on June 3, 2013, (or thereabout).

----------QUOTE ----------------
...we almost made it... Just almost!  (Well, maybe we were a little further off...)

It has been heartening to see so many people pledge their support for
STAR WOLF.

I want you all to know that I absolutely consider you all honorary members of our official Launch Crew, and will tell you now, that we will go on! 

Although the Kickstarter is over, we want to keep all of you...our fans of great Science Fiction involved.

By the end, we received an incredible amount of media attention and letters of support (from including Bill Prady (BIG BANG THEORY) and of course Spock himself (Leonard Nimoy)! This well help greatly in our next steps.

We're 100% dedicated to launching, and the success of the series and we will be updating you on our progress in making it happen.

Presently, we're starting our own mailing list to make it easier to reach you, and will soon be converting 'http://www.thestarwolf.com' as our headquarters for the series, and will be posting updates as we proceed...

You're support here touches our hearts, and as a thank you for your enthusiasm, those who pledged, AND sign up for the mailing list will receive the PDF of the pilot episode script on Wednesday (to give people time to send us their e-mail addresses. When we send out the e-mail, the link to the PDF will ONLY be available for a 24 period, so please send us your e-mail address soon!  (If you send us all of your contact info, mailing address, etc., you may get a surprise in the mail in the future.

So please... send us an e-mail right away to: thestarwolfseries@gmail.com

TODAY.

As for those hard earned dollars you're still holding onto, we would of course ask you to pledge again if we were to start another campaign but as for exciting projects being funded now, we'd like you to take a look at:

HARBINGER DOWN:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1117671683/harbinger-down-a-practical-creature-fx-film

Our friends at Alec Gillis, Lance Henriksen, and Dennis Skotak (ALIENS, TITANIC, X2), (The Star Wolf's VFX Director of Photography). Are working to make a great practical effects sci-fi horror film that celebrates old-school animatronics and Makeup FX.

They are taking a stand for great live-action visual effects, and are truly a great collection of talent.  We love them, and you'll love their work too.  So PLEASE... seriously consider showing them the great support you've shown us, and we'll all enjoy their terrific work soon.

From the bottom of all of hearts, thank you for your pledge, your time and your support.

Rest assured... WE'RE ONLY JUST BEGINNING! 

Thank you again!  We love you guys!

-- David C Fein
----------END QUOTE------------

So we'll be seeing and hearing a lot more about Star Trek coming at us from every direction. (good, I say!)

You all know I'm primary author of the Bantam Paperback, STAR TREK LIVES! which blew the lid on Star Trek fandom and ignited the revival campaign at the time the fan-run conventions had just begun.  At that time, no way on Earth would any professional in Hollywood (movies or TV) ever listen to a word any mere viewer said.  Nobody cared what we thought.

There was no feedback loop from consumer to producer that could guide them in creating entertainment that people would pay for.  They thought what they thought because of statistics generated by phone-survey firms and the TV set-top devices that Nielson used to monitor what a couple hundred select houses watched.  Statistics was just in its infancy.

Today we have that giant data center the US Government just fired up to collect all the internet traffic -- it will eventually be able to mine out exact numbers of how many watch what, and maybe even track what you, yourself, actually watch or spend time on.  Hollywood (if it can afford the fees) will be able to determine in advance what will be popular.

Today, there's all the streaming stuff -- audiences are wholly fragmented, but that gives new writers a chance to break in and create an audience for the stuff that author really wants.  Of course, the technical bar keeps getting higher.  To get your writing "out there" you need a full time tech specialist (or 10). 

So let's look at what a writer can do that replicates what Star Trek did to change the entire world of entertainment, and make "them" pay attention to "us."  The thing is, (considering the SFWA Bulletin Controversy we discussed last week), this is exactly what we need to do with SFR.

Star Trek actually launched the SFR genre via fan fiction -- fiction mostly written by women for women, and all about the real lives of the Enterprise crew and other crews of other ships in Star Fleet.  Today, all that fanfic pours online, all mixed up with beginning writers immature attempts.

Many people scoff at young writers writing about how the adult emotional world seems to them.  I don't.  I see these initial attempts to communicate what's important about life as the absolutely necessary work of training up a writer's mind.  All the best writers I've ever met started in childhood writing exactly what you see flooding fanfic online (nearly drowning out more mature attempts). 

Listen to the scoffing at young writers -- that's the scoff being aimed at Science Fiction Romance novels!  Same attitude.  Really.  Think about it.  If you have that attitude about young writers, can you seriously ask working SFWA members not to scoff at you?  Karma can be an issue in life.

So How Do We Replicate Star Trek?

The key question is why was Spock so popular?

He wasn't expected to be by Hollywood TV crafters, not even Gene Roddenberry! 

The "Spock" that gripped the world was originally two characters, a woman First Officer called Number One who was from a culture that was emotionless.  And the half-Vulcan Science Officer who was called Spock but behaved with obvious emotional reactions (especially the appreciation of beauty.) 

The Network wouldn't allow a woman to be in command on the bridge, to boss men around.

There's that sexism that exploded all over SFWA earlier this year!  It is not FROM SCIENCE FICTION, despite what SFR writers think.

That sexism is from OUR OWN CULTURE.

That sexism isn't gone, and it isn't just a few remnants inside SFWA that harbor this toxic stew.

So Gene Roddenberry's solution to that problem (he was the least sexist man of his age I ever knew) was the classic solution every beginning writer learns.

What you do when your THEME isn't "working" can be one of three things:

a) divide one character into two
b) combine two characters into one
c) add a new character

In TV and Film, adding characters adds expense, and that can prevent production from ever happening. 

GR wanted ST to get on the air.  He COMBINED TWO CHARACTERS -- and it made that one character much more powerful.

GR combined Number One and the original Spock into ONE CHARACTER -- our emotion-challenged Spock.

GR saw this new Spock as having emotions that he repressed. 

That is an anti-science-fiction premise that I rejected long before I met him and got to ask what he had in mind.  I wrote my fan-fic universe, Kraith, to explore "What If Spock Really Is What He Says He Is?"  Taking people at their word always leads to interesting territory and always generates great science fiction! 

http://simegen.com/fandom/startrek/

I did a very deep analysis of what makes Spock popular in STAR TREK LIVES!  I stand by that analysis, and it's still working today.

But today's world (as I've spent many posts here describing) is in massive shift due to new communications channels -- the web being only one.  Lately, Verizon (which provides fiber optic TV feeds as well as landline phone and cell phone) is offering TV channel feeds direct to your phone or other mobile device.  Take your TV shows with you, watch any time. 

The un-tethering of the world is going to affect what fiction gets popular enough to afford expensive productions, and that will change everything -- except the core essence of what makes a story gripping and energizing.

That core essence is theme-character integration -- and all the theme integrations with other story elements.  But what really grabs and won't let go is character. 

How do you build a gripping character for today's media distribution methodology?

You do what has always worked.  You look at what is popular today, and ask WHY? 

The TV show The Vampire Diaries is very popular -- as are other Vampire works.

OK, why are Vampires popular and what is it about The Vampire Diaries that is rattling teen minds?

As noted last week, the element of The Vampire Diaries that is drawn from the deepest (and thousands of years old) depths of human psychology is the combination of Good vs. Evil with Emotion vs. Logic.

Yep, LOGIC!

Remember last week we noted how the THEME-CHARACTER integration in The Vampire Diaries is a perfect "show don't tell" for the philosophical discussion this entire world is having (with guns blazing all over the Middle East) about the place of EMOTION in the scheme of LIFE.

Vampire Diaries modified the Vampire myth so that when these vampires turn OFF emotion, they become the typical Evil Menace type of selfish, power-hungry, dominating, tyrannical, human-eating, remorseless, force of evil that Vampires used to be in the standard myth.

If they turn ON their emotions, they become pretty ordinary humans, spanning the spectrum of good, bad and who-knows?

The thematic statement is woven into the Worldbuilding seamlessly and thrusts up into the characters as they play out the plot-events. 

Emotion = Good.

VULCANS are depicted as having the reputation of looking like the Devil (they're greenish instead of reddish -- the remake Spock isn't so greenish), and of being Emotionless.

That premise arose in the 1960's and ignited sexy-panting-furor.

Spock was the sexiest thing EVER on TV or in Film, and that's proven by all the non-fiction now being written analyzing the appeal of Star Trek and the history of it.

In fact, I have an essay in yet another book on the topic of Star Trek fandom.  When it's published, it will appear on my amazon page

http://www.amazon.com/Jacqueline-Lichtenberg/e/B000APV900/

And at the top of the right column you should now find an 'EMAIL ME WHEN THERE ARE NEW RELEASES BY JACQUELINE LICHTENBERG"  -- so you can keep up without effort.

So EMOTIONLESS = EVIL = SEXY.

Hmmm, and that dates back to the 1960's and 70's - the sexual revolution begun by the "Hippies" and then carried into adulthood and the workplace in the 1970's by "Women's Lib." 

And it still works today.

EMOTION = GOOD has surfaced now into explicit, on the nose style, dialogue. 

But it works even better when sunk deep into Worldbuilding as in The Vampire Diaries (which now has spun off THE ORIGINALS, the older and most Evil of the Vampire-Siblings with a leader who wants to be King.)  We're talking major success for EMOTION = GOOD on the commercial markets. 

Here's a link-list index post to Theme-Plot integration

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

I'll have to collect Theme-Worldbuilding Integration at some point.  Here is #6 with links to previous parts to that series.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/02/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-6.html

And here is my post on Star Trek: Into Darkness:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/07/theme-plot-integration-part-11-correct.html

It has links to prior posts in that series.

It is followed by Part 12 about a Tom Clancy book/movie.

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

The essential ingredients to creating your "Spock Character" are as follows:

1) Use the techniques I've been illustrating for studying our "real" world, the world of your reader, from an angle and at a depth the reader will not be aware of.  See my posts on THE ART OF WRITING.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/writers-eye-finds-symmetry.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html

2) Extract the THEME of your reader's world that's bugging them mightily and encapsulate that theme in a simple statement (like EMOTION = GOOD and THOUGHT = EVIL, but pick one of your very own, something that has true meaning to you personally) (this is what Gene Roddenberry did, but came up with 2-characters to state that theme, and the sexist thing really bugged him.)

3) CAST that theme into a Work by building a character, then building his/her world out around him from the essence of that character's internal conflict.  Remember Spock's EMOTIONLESS exterior covered a BURNING CURIOSITY -- and so he chose (against parental will) a career in Star Fleet to go where No Man Has Gone Before (sexist -- read last week's post on sexism).

4) Write your story to speak to your chosen audience in their medium of choice.  

5) Come back here next Tuesday for more.  We have barely scratched the surface of what there is to learn about fiction. 

by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Human-Animal Hybridization

Experiments with inserting human genes into animals have, among other astonishing results, produced mice whose brains are 1% human. Here’s an article discussing some research projects that have produced human-nonhuman chimeras:

National Geographic

The most crucial question about these lab animals, as mentioned in the article, is “When do they become human?” If some future experimental hybrid contains enough human DNA to cross that threshold, what rights would it have?

I view efforts to grow human-compatible tissues in nonhuman creatures (if they’re treated decently) as an exciting advance toward solving the transplant organ problem. How would that application be different, in principle, from extracting insulin from the pancreases of animals? Other applications of this emerging technology look more problematic. However, I don’t agree with the person quoted as saying any such hybridization “diminishes human dignity.” Much less a different article I read recently, which characterized any mixing of human-animal DNA as an abomination on the same level as breeding viable human-ape babies.

Imagine mice genetically engineered to produce human sperm cells and ova. Nobody is attempting this bizarre project now, but something similar has been done with mice for pigs and goats:

National Geographic

Someday we might actually face the ethical and social problems of intelligent, humanoid animals living among us like the Underpeople of Cordwainer Smith’s classic stories.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt