Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Dialogue Part 7 - The Gigolo and Lounge Lizard by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Dialogue Part 7
The Gigolo and Lounge Lizard
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Previous entries in this Dialogue series are found here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/10/dialogue-parts-1-4-listed.html (which has been updated with more posts).

This entry is not about the SHOWTIME TV Series The Gigolo, but in a way it is in that general direction.

A Gigolo is a paid Escort for a rich woman (which may include sex) who attends formal Events.  A Lounge Lizard is an out of work Gigolo who is looking for a woman to hire him. 

In either situation, the writer is faced with the task of writing the Gigolo's dialogue -- the pick-up line, and the long, smooth stream of lies he utters as part of his job.

A Gigolo is a professional liar.

So see the entry on Liar Dialogue:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/11/dialogue-part-5-how-to-write-liar.html

...and for a discussion of The Misnomer
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/02/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-6.html

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

This post is a dialogue writing lesson, exercising the writer's ability to come up with "snappy dialogue" and "retorts" and "one-liners" but above all, the specific line a character says to another character that makes the reader understand how the character who believes a lie could be taken in by such a transparent gigolo.

The bald truth is that the writer generally does not nail the gigolo or lounge lizard dialogue on the first try. 

Great dialogue is usually produced on rewrite, maybe the 5th rewrite.  But somewhere in that first-draft blurt-the-story-out attempt at dialogue will be a line, a word, a dynamic moment of CONFLICT that has to be preserved.

Usually the problem embedded in first draft is pacing.

Very often an editor will return a manuscript with a marginal notation that says this dialogue is not PLAUSIBLE -- or I DON'T BELIEVE THIS -- or MAKE ME BELIEVE IT -- or IT'S UNCLEAR WHY THIS CHARACTER BELIEVED THIS.

Editors see a manuscript from one perspective, writers from another, and readers from yet another.

When all 3 see a solid product, it's a 3-dimensional image and none of the 3 views show the whole thing.

And yes, the touchstone that makes great dialogue work is THEME.  I know you're weary of hearing me say that, but it's nevertheless true.  Most of us have to conform our dialogue to the theme in rewrite.

Conforming dialogue to theme not a random process, not a matter of "taste" and not just characterization or description, nor of the writer's "voice" nor of just how you feel at the moment.  There is a systematic structure behind dialogue, and it can be learned.  Some writers have a talent, an "ear" for dialogue.  Others have to learn it. 

Good dialogue is a necessary but not sufficient condition for making a sale.

Dialogue is such a complex skill that showing you have that skill on page 1 or 2 can hook an editor. 

If you demonstrate you have all the skills that are woven together in good dialogue, an editor is more likely to assume you are able to take editorial direction. 

So if your Romance Novel starts with a Lounge Lizard approaching your heroine with a pick-up line, maybe rescuing her from a sticky social situation to demonstrate what an exemplary Escort he is, you have an immediate, conflict-fraught, instance of off the nose dialogue, oblique references subject to misunderstandings in layers.

If the guy is just looking for a paying gig with this richly dressed woman, and ends up falling in love with her -- (after he seduces her into hiring him, or when she flat refuses to hire an Escort) -- you have conflict on all levels.

If you set your story on, say, a Cruise Boat, (where they can't escape each other), you can ratchet up the tension and suspense because there is a fixed time when the cruise will be over.

From there, you have many choices for complications to your plot -- cruise boat mechanical failures, bad navigation leaving them in a terrible storm, hijackers forcing them to port in a terrorist held country, -- you choose the list of complications that arise via the theme you have chosen. 

You can do that plot on a Space Ship -- a cruise ship or say, a military vessel on a mission, or a cargo vessel, or a hospital ship (Research that by reading James White novels), or a Colony (lost or otherwise).  Each setting shapes the plot, and explicates a different theme which then shapes the Relationship between Gigolo and Rich Woman.

But the dialogue technique is the same, regardless of location, regardless of the subject of the discussion, regardless of the character of the characters.

The substance, the content, of the dialogue differs with theme, but the method of creating dialogue out of the speech you hear in your head is pretty much the same.

There are differences depending on what the characters are doing.  If they're breathless in the middle of a sword fight, separated in a loud gun-battle, or suffocating as a space ship loses air, they will speak in shorter bursts, but the trick of creating that dialogue is the same, regardless.

Master this single technique and it will serve you in almost any genre or format.

It's often taught as, "Don't Speechify." 

Don't make your characters speak in long paragraphs flowing from subject to subject, even if the logic behind that line of thought is vital for the reader to grasp.

Don't write SPEECHES -- like a Presidential State Of The Union Address! 

Dialogue is not a newspaper article explaining a whole incident all at once.

Dialogue is not speech, and it's not speeches. 

Dialogue is not an essay.  Dialogue isn't even a letter you'd send to a friend. 

Dialogue is more like texting than it is like school essay writing.

If you read some science fiction written in the 1930's and 1940's when all those writing science fiction were beginning writers, well educated and well versed in explaining science -- but not in portraying relationships -- you will find dialogue that today is called STILTED.

Stilted dialogue makes the characters sound self-conscious - as if they know the reader is listening.

In stagecraft, the technique you must master is called "the fourth wall" -- the wall between the audience and the stage, so the characters are unconscious of the audience.  Yes, Greek Plays use the narrator, the chorus, etc. addressing the audience directly.

This evolution of storytelling from the shaman around the campfire to Showtime streaming video episodes of Gigolo. 

Another indication of that 4th wall effect, of the characters being unaware of the audience watching is the choice of "Person" in which to tell the story.  The 3rd person (he, she, etc) and past tense (he said, she howled) creates that 4th wall and makes it both transparent and firm.  That allows the audience to "identify with" the characters, but there are many skills necessary to make that effect work.

Beginners almost always grab for the much easier First Person (I couldn't believe it when my Date for the Prom turned into a wolf right before my eyes.)

It is so much easier to write First Person -- to BE the character, and reach out and talk directly to the audience (like the Greek Chorus and narrator), to make the drama of immediate and engaging concern to strangers that you now see a flood of novels using this format. 

That's a trend, a style, and it will turn again, so if you intend to launch a career that spans many trends, become facile with all persons and tenses for storytelling.  Master point of view and it will hone your dialogue skills.

Why does point of view (and "person") matter to dialogue?

Because the Identity of the speaker is fleshed out by not only choice of vocabulary, but also by how and whether that character waits for the other character to finish speaking, by what "go-stop" cues the character will accept or respond to.

How patient is this character?

You can TELL NOT SHOW easily by saying to the reader in the narrator's voice, Tom was an impatient man, a type-a personality on the hoof.  Or you can SHOW NOT TELL that same information by how Tom interrupts people who are speechifying at him.

Relationships can be defined in SHOW rather than TELL by the rhythm of the dialogue, by what's left out, by finishing each others' sentences (or not even bothering) -- about how well or poorly the two people communicate with each other, and how the weave a third person into the conversation.

One of the stark changes in society over the last century (no, I'm not that old; I read a lot) is the art of conversation.  Today people communicate but they don't converse much or often.

If you're building a Romance Novel, you want the two principles who will end up with each other to converse even better than they communicate.

The difference between conversing and communicating is the main skill of the Lounge Lizard. 

The Lounge Lizard, the Gigolo looking for work, is a master of conversing freely, arousing emotions in the targeted woman that re so bright, clear, and pleasant that the flare of emotion obliterates the lack of communication.

Conversation is "off the nose" dialogue - the words are not about what the conversation is about.  You don't say what you mean and mean what you say.  In Conversation, you induce in the other person the illusion that they understand who you are.

This is the main skill of the Confidence Man, the grifter, the scam artist.  But it is also what happens when you meet a true love. 

Conversation happens between people "on the same wavelength."  These two Lovers have some element of world-view in common.  That's the one topic they never have to talk about (on the nose) because they resonate to that one underlying truth about the nature of Life.

They can (and usually do) disagree and fight over everything else. 

Their conversation is all about that everything else.

The Lounge Lizard is master of mimicking that resonating effect by dancing around the one issue or subject he perceives is most important to that woman. 

Both men and women treasure that sensation of resonating to another person's world-view.  When a couple finds they resonate on several topics, that their combined world view is a symphony in perfect attunement, there is no way to destroy that relationship.

If that resonance is real, it will hold them together forever.

The Lounge Lizard wants to avoid "real resonance."  But at the same time, he offers the illusion of that resonance to his paying client. 

That's the Gigolo's inner conflict, upon which you can build his external conflict. 

This is the same conflict dynamic as the Spy who lives under cover in the foreign country and pretends to hold their beliefs -- only to find that over time, he becomes loyal to those alien beliefs, betrays his country and is a Traitor. 

There's a principle in classical magic - you become what you pretend to be.  Thus when you don magickal robes to officiate in a ceremony where you must act like your Higher Self, eventually you become that Higher Self in everyday life. 

This principle is so pervasive that those who have not studied magic know it, believe it, and/or accept it when they see it.

You are what you eat; you become what you pretend to be. 

So the writing technique is the same whether you're writing Romance or Mystery (or Science Fiction or SFR etc.)

Here's an example of dialogue from an action-mystery novel well worth studying for dialogue.  We have a set of characters who have become friends, even close friends, and lovers during the course of solving other mysteries.  Dana is the star, and should therefore have the most dialogue. (that's a rule to learn -- face time and lines of dialogue are maximum for THE MAIN CHARACTER - the one whose story you are telling.)

Proportions and pacing are essential components of Show Don't Tell.

Here "She" is Dana, the star of the novel.

---quote from Gray Wolf Mountain, a Logan & Cafferty mystery/suspense by Jean Henry Mead ----
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008UEH6ZA/

She thought again about Rhonda Bailey's connection and he reason both bodies were dumped in the same stream. The killer must live nearby.

“How far are we from the cabin where Gus was found?” she asked Tom.

He turned to survey the area to get his bearings. “About a mile as the crow flies, I’d say.”

“I wonder if the sheriff’s deputies have searched the cabin for clues to the killer’s identity.”

“I’m sure they have.”

Dana thought for a moment. “Why didn’t the killer bury the bodies instead of bringing them here? He obviously wanted them found. A warning to others to stay away?”

“Looks that way,” Jeff said.

“Why is he leaving clues?” Dana said to no one in particular.

“He may consider it a game like hide and seek. Psychopaths are usually intelligent people who consider themselves superior to others. I think he might be taunting the rest of us.”

When nothing else was found, they drove back to the original site, where Jeff showed them the drag marks and probable site where they body had been found.   ...

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

While you think about how you might rewrite that exchange here's the author's biography from Amazon.

The author of 20 books, Jean Henry Mead has published ten nonfiction books and ten novels, including the Logan & Cafferty mystery/suspense series and Hamilton Kids' mysteries. She also writes Wyoming historical novels (Escape, A Wyoming Historical Novell and No Escape, the Sweetwater Tragedy). The national award winnning photojournalist began her writing career as a news reporter in California. Her award-winning articles have been published domestically as well as abroad, and she has served as a news, magazine and small press editor. She also established the Western Writers Hall of Fame now housed at the large and impressive Buffalo Bill Musesum in Cody, Wyoming.

NOTE: Jean Henry Read did a stint as a news reporter. 

Do you understand how this ingredient in a writing career is vital?

Marion Zimmer Bradley did it.  Allan Cole did it.  The list is endless.

Non-fiction is where the money is in wordsmithing. 

So you should read Gray Wolf Mountain with an eye on the dialogue, and what you might change to transform it to another genre, or to create different characters.

Let's study that one little snatch from page 139 of the Kindle edition.

Notice how SHORT the utterances are.  The group is standing around a piece of evidence (at the 60% mark of the novel, just past the half-way point) feeling the threat of physical violence (which is realized) and trying to "profile" the killer from where Rhonda Bailey's body has been found.

They have discovered a cigarette lighter with initials on it somewhat down stream from where the body had been found.  Whose is it?  How did it get there?  Why didn't the police find it?  Etc.

Notice the SHORT sentences, question, answer -- think of a bouncing ball going around a conversational circle.  This is not an interrogation of a suspect, but a brainstorming session over a problem.  The technique applies to any scene where people do group problem solving. 

Notice how intact Mead keeps that 4th wall.  The characters are talking to each other, not aware we're listening.  They aren't giving US information.  There's no, "As you know, Bill, ... etc."  They aren't describing the scenery to each other for our visual delight.

They are intent on problem solving, and aware of impending threat from a crazy guy.

So let's consider what we might do while reading (remember on Kindle you can insert NOTES as you read, and highlight and bookmark text so this kind of study is easy.)

-----------FREEHAND REWRITE ---------------

She reconsidered Rhonda Bailey's connection to all this. 

“How far are we from the cabin where Gus was found?” she asked Tom.

He glanced around at the pine forest.  "You think the killer lived nearby?"

"Well, both bodies were dumped in the same stream." 

He glanced around at landmarks only he recognized. “About a mile as the crow flies, I’d say.”

“Do you think the sheriff’s deputies have searched the cabin for clues to the killer’s identity.”

“I’m sure they have.”

Dana paced, muttering. “Why didn’t the killer bury the bodies instead of hauling them here?"

"Maybe he wanted them found?"  Tom followed kicking at debris, looking for more evidence.

"As a warning to others to stay away?” she guessed. 

“Looks that way,” Jeff inspected the creek.

“Why is he leaving clues?” Dana said to the silent trees.

“Psychopaths are usually intelligent people who consider themselves superior to others. I think he might be taunting the rest of us.”

"You think he may be playing a game like hide and seek?"

Tom nodded slowly.  Jeff watched him a moment, then headed back for the car, saying, "You should see the drag marks where we think the body was moved." 

-------------END FREEHAND REWRITE---------

Notice how much longer that approach makes it than the original.

If you've got a rewrite order that says to reduce the length, those are exactly the changes you'd make to shrink it. 

Also notice how the characters and situation morph under those tiny changes.

NOW ON TO THE MEAT OF THE MATTER

Society, civilization, mythology and technology are all components of every world you must build around your characters.

Even when working in contemporary Romance, or near-time science fiction romance, or Urban Fantasy Paranormal Romance set in sort-of the current day, you have to "invent" your world from the point of view of your main character.

Even the world seen by your subordinate characters if you use them as Point of View characters has to "match" the world as it is perceived by your Main Character. 

Putting these pieces together into a work of art is an art in itself, like mixing oil paints to smear on a canvass and suggest (using 2 dimensions) a 3-D picture.  The human brain interprets the shadings and textures and creates the imagined 3-D image.  Reading a story in text-only, the imagination creates that extra dimension of emotion, of emotional connection. 

The best place to learn to understand what sexual seduction is all about is the study of Advertising, of PR, of spin-doctoring, of motivational speaking, of selling. 

A victim of seduction believes -- is deeply convinced -- that this is True Love, a Soul Mate.

A real Soul Mate knows what you mean when you tell them how you feel.

Your words resonate and produce behavior that confirms, that validates, your emotional life within the emotional life of the other.  Like music.  One string vibrates, the air transmits the energy, and the other string vibrates without having been touched.  That is resonance.

That's what advertisers mean when they say a "message resonates" with the public.  They mean that people who haven't heard the original message nevertheless repeat that message.

That's how love works when it is REAL.

Mimicking that effect is what the Lounge Lizard or Gigolo does.  His job is to accompany his employer and convince rooms full of people that his employer is not paying him money to be with her, but that she is a prime example of womanhood because she has won his high regard (and just LOOK at him; wow! she must be something!). 

Having arm candy around you paints a picture of you, doctor's your spin, makes a statement about YOU.  It isn't real, and most people in that formal party do know that, but nevertheless the glow of approval of that Arm Candy individual paints the employer in a light different from the actual reality.

So making that emotional contact, and hitting the "note" that resonates is an artform.

After centuries of hit-or-miss, that artform has been codified into a science.  The science is called PR.  It is the art of convincing you to do what you would never do under mere hypnosis -- behave in a self-destructive manner untrue to your own character.

These techniques can be applied to your benefit.  A Gigolo looking for a job may notice you hunting the audience for a suitable man to hire and present himself using what he's noticed (Sherlock Holmes fashion) about you.

They can also be applied to induce you to behave in a way that benefits the Gigolo not you.

From a writer's point of view, the Gigolo or Lounge Lizard role is identical to that of today's politicians.  What you see is not what you get. 

Politicians hire PR people

I've discussed PR and its origins and uses many times.  Self-publishing writers have to master this branch of psychology -- or hire a firm to do it for them just as publishers do.

Here are some links in case you're not familiar with the kind of "arm twisting" tactics developed to "control" the behavior of herds of people.

FROM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_public_relations

----------QUOTE-----------
Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing the spread of information between an individual or an organization and the public.[1] Early forms of public influence and communications management have existed since the dawn of ancient civilizations, but the professionalization of the discipline occurred in the early 20th century. Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays helped establish the field as a professional practice in the United States, Basil Clarke and Sir Stephen Tallents pioneered the field in the United Kingdom, while Arthur W. Page is considered the father of corporate PR.

The field became more established after World War II, in part due to talent from war-time propaganda efforts moving into the private sector.
----------END QUOTE--------

For another angle on the explanation of PR:
http://www.slideshare.net/Brett509/public-relations-theory-537389

And note this:
http://www.fullsail.edu/ is a school for animation artists, especially videogame builders, where you can get a bleeding edge tech degree to work in the Public Relations (advertising) field where image is everything.

Dig down and you'll find this very math-driven field of PR is pretty much the art of the con man, the grifter, the trickster. 

In January 2014, we discussed an example of this kind of psychological judo that can let an advertiser throw you over the shoulder and cart you away.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/01/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-8.html
--------------------QUOTE---------------
Statistics have proven such accurate predictors of the behavior of large populations of otherwise dissimilar individuals (people, yes, but this would apply to non-humans as well) that people use those numbers to create their opinions.

And a growing number of young adults are using statistics reports "backwards."

Using statistics forwards means collecting data on individuals and predicting how large numbers of individuals will move together in the same direction.

For example: how many iPads will Apple sell in the next six months?  How many people will upgrade from a Samsung to an iPad (and think it's an UPgrade?).

Those are questions statistics can answer accurately.

Will you upgrade from a Samsung or Kindle to an iPad and think it an UPgrade?

Statistics can't answer that.  It would be using statistics "backwards" to predict your behavior based on the behavior of a majority, or even a significant minority of people "just like you."

But your friend you go to lunch with at work might use released statistics to make a confident assumption about your future behavior.  That lunch conversation can become the core of a novel's conflict by Integrating that THEME (working statistics backwards) into the WORLDBUILDING (contemporary Romance).
---------------END QUOTE--------------

Since we have been conditioned, in school and in news reports of STUDIES, and in doctor's offices where prescriptions are given (or not) based on statistical studies of the effects of the medication rather than on experimental evidence of how this medication affects you, therefore we tend to skip over the inconvenient truth that the "average" response to anything has no relevance to you, personally. 

The systematic, repeated dunning in of the message "statistics show" means "you are average" by PR techniques has thwarted every math teacher's strident insistence that statistics can not be worked backwards. 

One primary PR technique is the appeal to "experts" -- i.e. people who know better than you, and the subliminal message that you better be afraid of authority and do as experts say because they know better than you.  Fortunes have been poured into perfecting statistics because they can be used to bolster that argument.

So besides greed, fear, and insecurity are traits the grifter activates in a Mark.  The Lounge Lizard targeting a client has perfected the appearance of power and authority.

Stop and think a moment about that.  Remember the watchword of all story telling is SHOW DON'T TELL.  Think how you would show rather than tell how your Gigolo character sweeps his Mark off her feet -- then think about what she would do once she figures out what he did to her.  Creative retaliation is a way to SHOW not TELL.

The art of the con man, the grifter, the trickster, uses the traits of your psychology as weapons against you, just as the con man uses greed.

If you have no greed in you, no con man can have any effect on your behavior -- because without greed you have no fear of loss and are not in awe of authority but choose to obey of your own free will. 

In other words, without greed, you can not be forced to do anything because the only ones who have authority over you are ones to whom you have given (thus may rescind) authority. 

Should such an authority induce you to act against your own best interests, you will not do it. 

In fact, even if such an authority claims this action is in your best interests, you will not do it -- because if your mind is not clouded by greed that induces fear-of-loss and makes you tremble before "authority" that threatens to strip you of whatever you treasure, then you will see it is not in your best interests to comply.

Greed within us allows those among us who are greedy for power to attain power over us. 

That's an abstract statement (a TELL not a SHOW) about how the greed mechanism of the human subconscious shapes our civilizations (all of them back to the dawn of time).  To use that principle in drama you must SHOW it, not TELL it. 

So the absence of greed which allows for resistance to authority translates easily into plot where you can best show without telling that the individual has no greed.  That embeds characterization into action. 

By now you've seen the film, LONE SURVIVOR -- a perfect example of characterization embedded in plot where the US Soldiers let the shepherds go instead of killing them to insure the squad's safety.  That scene is why you cry at the end of that movie.  If that characterization had been done with tell -- people talking about these soldiers back in the barracks -- you wouldn't cry at the end.  Pay particular attention to the dialogue in that scene.

Here is an omnibus of a duo-logy I wrote about a Lone Survivor who is not human rescued by a human battleship engaged in an interstellar war. 



Controlling the behavior of others by activating their Greed is a principle that pre-dates modern psychology -- you find it in the Ten Commandments! 

Where it says do not covet your neighbor's ass, wife, property etc -- DO NOT COVET is code for do not be greedy. 

Want what you have and you will have what you want.

Violate that one commandment and every con man in the world will gravitate to you because you have Mark written on your forehead in bright fire.

But both men and women who have not yet found their Soul Mate harbor a greed for that experience of resonating with another Soul.

We are greedy for a whole orchestra of souls, children and family, to resonate with.  We are at rest only when surrounded by those we resonate with.

That is the nature of the human being.  Remember the article I linked in a previous post about how a married man's testosterone level drops as his kids are born -- if he spends his time with wife and children.  It's an effect beyond merely having sex with his wife.  Family tames the aggressive, trouble-making tendencies of excessive testosterone. 

We are all greedy for that experience of rest -- and the mere promise of it (a hot-sexy Gigolo image) will ignite that greed.

But understanding that the promise is an illusion breaks the Gigolo effect and turns the greed to disgust.

How many people know enough math to understand what's being done to them by "commercials" and that a Lounge Lizard is a walking sandwich board commercial!.

The concept "Lounge Lizard" refers to a person who goes where the "action" they are looking for tends to congregate.  The "Lounge" is some kind of high class drinking establishment, and the action sought is rich employers looking for an employee. 

In other words, the person seeking to influence the behavior of someone goes to the place where lots of people open to being influenced congregate. 

For example, an advertiser selling expensive cars wants to advertise on a TV show watched by people who have a lot of money. 

How many people understand the value of words?  Especially the words in advertising copy?

Here is an eye-opening article on the shift in TV advertising for Apple products between 2013 and 2014.  (read this excerpt with an eye to casting it into dialogue as demonstrated above in the rewrite exercise.)

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/ad-day-apple-borrows-dead-poets-society-evocative-ad-ipad-air-154937

--------QUOTE FROM ARTICLE-------------
 Using the Dead Poets source material is a curious choice. You might think going with third-party copy—the film was written by Tom Schulman, who won a screenwriting Oscar for it—betrays a continuing lack of confidence in the brand's own voice, or at least the current expression of that voice. And maybe it does. But still, it's an inspired passage that fits wonderfully with the Apple brand.

"Medicine, law, business, engineering—these are noble pursuits, and necessary to sustain life," Williams (as Professor Keating) says in the voiceover. "But poetry, beauty, romance, love—these are what we stay alive for." That message is pure Apple, going back to the "Think different" days as well as Justin Long's teasing of the spreadsheet-loving John Hodgman in the "Get a Mac" ads. Apple's business is art (and the business of art), not commerce—though the visual storytelling here cleverly shows the product contributing to both.
-----------END QUOTE---------------

Notice that's from a website called "adweek.com"  -- adweek is FOR advertisers, and as a self-publishing writer that would include you.

Do you understand the nuances of this article (read the whole thing). 

It reveals the way people trying to trick you think about you.

This article is about selling tech devices, but it is the same process used by a Gigolo or a Politician.  Trace out the reasoning, then trace that reasoning backwards.  The objective never articulated is to get you to part with your MONEY to buy a DEVICE.

Those who follow Apple on the financial market know there is about $400 worth of profit in every iPad Air (#5) fully loaded with memory (cost about $935).  Yeah, in the USA these devices are THAT overpriced. 

How does Apple get away with this? It makes similar profits on iphones and macbooks.

Advertising, that's how.

What's advertising?  PR.  What's PR?  Mathematics.

When you understand what Apple is doing to "get away with it" you will understand what Politicians do to "get away with it" (whatever "it" they've tricked the public into doing lately).  All advertising is trickery -- it's all seduction. 

If you're self-publishing, you have to understand how they do this and decide how you can employ it and still conform to your own sense of ethics.

Look at the tuition to Full Sail University linked above.  That is an expensive education, and only the best and brightest can manage to graduate from such a school. 

Full Sail University is a for-profit university and its graduates work on Oscar Winning pictures.  This school has already produced an army of soldiers taking the field to conquer and control your behavior.  And there are many other schools more specialized in producing high-skilled practitioners of PR. 

Understand this pattern in our real world.  Understand how this pattern developed historically, pivoting especially around WWII. 

Understand that your reader has no clue that this is being done, but she is unconsciously (and happily) dancing to the tune played by PR practitioners (selling everything from hair spray to anti-aging creams, from vitamin supplements to SUVs).

Now, worldbuild the environment of your story, and be sure to include this PR element.

The Gigolo is a PR expert-for-hire, ready to convince everyone at the party that he is your escort, and that you are Somebody because he admires you.  His admiration elevates you.  His job is to make everyone else admire you because of how he admires you.  It's an old artform, and a new mathematics. 

The Gigolo or Lounge Lizard (male or female variety) is the SHOW for this element of human nature that gives rise to PR, while the PR article on Wikipedia is the TELL for the same thing.  BTW "Lot Lizard" is slang for whores who use CB radio to lure truckers to truck stop lots for a cheap quickie. 

If you're building an Alien Romance novel, you have to know (but don't have to let the reader know) what character elements your Alien's Grifter or Gigolo uses to get a handle on a Mark.  What is the Alien's weakness?  Is it Greed and Covetousness?  Or something else? 

Among humans, the use of slang or circumlocutions like "Lot Lizard" is a sure sign that there's repressed Guilt underlying the choices of action, driving motivation.  So give your Aliens some oblique-speak idioms to designate their unsanctioned actions. 

The human strength is how we become immune to PR once we see the mechanism of it working on us. 

What is your Alien's strength? 

Now pit the human and alien lovers-to-be against each other using the Greed trait to create the conflict.  Then do the dialogue exercise demonstrated above using seduction as the subject, not finding a murderer (either one is problem solving).

Maybe your trio in this dialogue is an alien grifter team (as depicted in the TV Series LEVERAGE that I've written about:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/02/tv-shows-leverage-and-psych.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Sunday, May 18, 2014

USPTO on Statutory Damages, First Sale Doctrine (digital), and Remixes

Copyright reform is on the government Agenda.

By the way.... authors, have you registered with the Authors' Registry? If not, you may be one of the authors for who the Registry is holding significant funds. Find out more, and download the paperwork to register here: http://www.authorsregistry.org

For more information, email staff@​authorsregistry.org.

This coming week, the United States Patent And Trademark Office will host a "Roundtable" on the topics of Statutory Damages (for individual copyright infringers and for large scale copyright infringers), on the First Sale Doctrine in the digital environment, and on a legal framework for the creation of remixes.

Follow the USPTO on Livestream here: http://new.livestream.com/uspto/roundtable1

What I find most remarkable about this process is the dearth of mid-list authors who are taking an interest at the very time when the government is seeking input from individual content creators who cannot afford the very expensive legal pursuit remedies available to major publishers, movie studios, and recording houses.

Also astounding: SFWA, RWA, AG, NWU, do not appear to be participating. Why do you think that is? Do authors' associations not believe that it is important to have a seat at a table that might make recommendations to lawmakers concerning whether or not "used" ebooks may legally be sold, shared, given away by anyone who acquires an original copy legally?

The First Sale Doctrine currently applies to physical goods (paper books, for instance) which deteriorate in physical condition every time they are used (or read). "Used" reflects the depreciation in value and "life expectancy" of the product. Once a "used" item is sold, the seller relinquishes ownership of it entirely, and is physically unable to retain a copy.

In the case of new ebooks, the content is --strictly speaking-- not sold, it is licensed.

What happens if First Sale Doctrine applies to digital content? Amazon has a patent on selling "used" ebooks. Does that mean that Amazon will corner the market? What happens to authors' royalty-based sales if would-be ebook purchasers have a choice between buying new or used ebooks? Both will be of identical quality. Both will be delivered instantly. Both will be available at the same time. "Used" will be cheaper.... and no royalties will be paid to the authors.

How will authors or their takedown services be able to send Takedown notices to pirate sites when there may be no way to know which copies are "used" and which are illegal copies? (See Marilynn Byerly's post yesterday on this blog.)

EBooks are not a product. They are pure content. If the content becomes the property of the purchaser of one copy --to do with as they please, including "sharing", reselling... how is anyone to know whether a copy that appears where the author has not licensed it to be is there lawfully or not?

sincerely,

Rowena Cherry


Saturday, May 17, 2014

Should First Sale Doctrine Apply To Intellectual Property?


Marilynn Byerly has graciously consented to allow me to repost an article she posted on her own "Adventures In Writing" blog in November 2013.

Marilynn's comments are important as the USPTO is about to host a Roundtable on the topic of copyright reform with regard to whether First Sale Doctrine should apply to digital works, and as a group of Berkeley lawyers attempts to start a "grassroots" movement to change (weaken) copyright protections under the law--which I infer is for the benefit of Amazon, Google, libraries, and freetards-- but not for professional authors.


Should eBooks Be Resold Like Used Paper Books?


The Department of Commerce is asking for comments about 
Digital First Sale and the possible changes to copyright law
 that would allow an ebook to be resold.  

Here’s my letter.

The biggest problem with the resale of “used” e-books 
is e-book piracy.  Some think that cheaper books mean less reason to 
pirate books and that’s true to a certain extent, but used e-books also
mean that authors and publishers will no longer be able to prove 
that an online copy has been stolen.

Right now, publishers and authors license their books to specific 
resellers/distributors like Amazon Kindle, BN’s Nook, and Smashwords. 
If a book is available at any other site, the publisher and author know 
instantly that that book is pirated, and they help the authorities take 
these sites down.  

These sites are fairly common, and some look like legitimate 
book-selling sites so the consumer is no wiser that they are buying
 stolen books.  Some of these sites actually sell the books, others 
are scams which steal credit card information and install viruses 
on the victim’s computer.  

If e-books are sold used, the scam sites will be able to fly under 
the legal radar.

Pirate sites will claim that their books are being given away for free 
by legal owners so they can continue their dispersal of illegal copies.  

If e-books are sold used and a site or individual can sell thousands 
of copies  of the same ebook by saying that they are selling one used,
there will be no way  for the author/publisher to prove this.  
This will essentially make book theft a crime that can’t be punished.

Even readers who want to do the right things by buying legally won’t 
be able to tell who is a legitimate reseller and who isn’t.  

Readers looking for bargains will buy illegal books instead of legal 
ones, the profit margin for authors and publishers which is small now 
will plummet to the point that publishing will no longer be profitable
for anyone, and those who make the money will have done nothing
to create books.  

Allowing the sale of used e-books will destroy all value to copyright.


Thank you, Marilynn Byerly.

My best wishes,
Rowena Cherry

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Smart Houses

The June 2014 issue of CONSUMER REPORTS contains an article titled “Run Your Home from Your Phone.” (Unfortunately, their articles aren’t available free online.) Here are some of the operations that can already be performed remotely by cell phone apps:

Monitor burglar alarms. Notify you if your home electrical generator stops working. Sense body heat patterns and turn equipment on and off depending on whether there are people in the room. (I don’t quite get what this one has to do with remote operation by phone.) Let you know when water is overflowing from a pipe or appliance and shut it off. Remotely lock and unlock doors or “change who’s authorized to enter.” Notify you if the smoke alarm or CO detector is triggered and shut down fuel-burning appliances. Tell you if the power to the refrigerator fails. Start the washing machine or dryer and alert you if the dryer vent is clogged. Preheat the oven, set the timer, and check cooking status. Turn lights on and off, as well as set a vacation schedule for lights and climate controls.

The article cautions that potential hackers might access information such as the locking and unlocking history of the doors or the fact that a smart thermostat is in vacation mode. It also rightly points out that switching on an oven when you aren’t home could present a fire hazard. (More so than starting the oven and then going out for a while, though?) The writers also mention a device that they don’t recommend and I can’t imagine why anybody would bother with—a smart toilet priced at over $5,000. Unless you’re severely disabled, do you really want a commode to open automatically at your approach, play music(!!), flush automatically, and clean itself? Okay, maybe the last feature would be handy. But I don’t even like public restroom facilities with hands-free flushing, which have a creepy habit of activating when one doesn’t want them to. And, says the article, the system can easily be hacked.

I doubt I would embrace any of these functions, even if I had a smart phone (when we last upgraded our account and the rest of the family got smart phones, I insisted on keeping my dumb one) and even if the apps and their associated systems became super cheap. I already shudder at the thought of storing one’s bank account password on a gadget so vulnerable to loss or theft, much less the unlocking code for one’s house. I can see the appeal of the convenience, however.

Maybe today’s children, as adults, will be living in totally computerized homes like the one in Ray Bradbury’s classic story “There Will Come Soft Rains.” Personally, I’d love to see a sapient, talking house like “Sarah” in the TV series EUREKA. “She” was one of my favorite secondary characters. I especially enjoyed the plot thread of her falling in love with the robotic deputy sheriff, Andy.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Index to Marketing Fiction In A Changing World by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Index to Marketing Fiction In A Changing World
by 
Jacqueline Lichtenberg


It isn't enough to just write a great story, nor even to write a story that precisely fits what publishers want. 

Today's changing world requires writers to do much more than write. 

Some manage this problem by marrying or partnering up with someone with the requisite skills, and some hire an agent.  Some get lucky and connect with the right editor.

Everyone else has to pay attention to Marketing, Markets, Publishing, video, advertising, PR, and branding -- all kinds of things that really compete with creative time. 

Self-publishing is yet another whole set of skills that adds in book design, formatting, layout, cost-effective use of various online outlets, accounting, and a myriad secretarial skills. 

We have not yet covered all these requisites in this blog series, even though I've been touching on this subject since 2009.  Here is what we have so far in this series, with the newest at the top.

My series on Marketing Fiction In A Changing World:

Part 27 -
The Half Hour Drama Is Back
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/08/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html
Part 26 - 
Must You Compromise Your Art To Sell Big? 
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/06/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

Part 25 - Understanding the Shifting Fiction Market
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/05/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

Part 24- Writing About The Future And For The Future
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/02/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

Part 23 - Mastering The Narrative Line
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/10/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_31.html

Part 22 - Making A Profit At Writing In A Capitalist World
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/10/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_11.html

Part 21 - Crafting Book Links To Track Via Google
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/10/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/07/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_19.html  Part

20. Guest Post by Miriam Pia

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/07/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html Part 19, Guest Post by Deb Wunder on non-fiction writing

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/05/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html Part 18 - Amazon makes some bad marketing decisions

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/01/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html Part 17 - Fiction Writing still pays less than minimum wage, considering the hours spent. Make your living at non-fiction. See where the opportunities lurk.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/11/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_24.html Part 16 about which is more science fiction, Star Trek or Star Wars? A question via Quora.com

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/11/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html Part 15 - Guest Post by Kirok of L'Stok and discussion of new series by Jean Johnson
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/09/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html Part 14 - posting on September 1, 2015

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/05/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html is Part 13 in this series.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/02/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html is Part 12

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/02/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html  is Part 11 in this series.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/11/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html  -- this is Part 10

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/03/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_18.html


http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/03/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_11.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/03/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/02/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_25.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/02/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_18.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/02/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/03/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html



Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Monday, May 12, 2014

Opining On Last Week's News (relating to authors' rights)

The USPTO hosted a six-hour long forum last week with the noble goal of exploring whether DMCA TakeDown notices can be standardized in the interests of greater efficiency and accuracy.  

Videos are available here:  

Presentations were made by The Copyright Alliance, Google, EFF, Deviant Art, MPAA. RIAA, a fan-fic site and others.

Sensible ideas included a wish that the process could be fair, non-intimidating for those seeking to either enforce copyrights or dispute Take-down Notices. Copyright owners asked whether recipients of TakeDown notices could be encouraged to refrain from editorializing or otherwise stigmatizing senders of TakeDown notices.

(One example of this is the sad face that YouTube posts with a note naming the copyright claimant)

Many speakers and audience members asked everyone to consider the proposition that a TakeDown should be permanent, and the same ISP should not allow users to re-upload files that have been taken down. Representatives of smaller hosting sites pointed out that this could be expensive for them. Musicians and movie-makers pointed out that "whack-a-mole" places an unreasonable burden on creators.

Google explained their process which is designed through an online questionnaire to funnel complainants to the correct one of six forms for their DMCA purposes. It is reported (elsewhere) that Google receives a million TakeDown notices every day.

Much laughter ensued when one presenter showed how advertising sites force would-be copyright enforcers to view screen after screen of sexually charged advertisements and incontinence products (and also to solve Capchas) before they are able to reach a TakeDown form.

Aside... presumably the Diaper makers are paying for views and have no idea that they are wasting their advertising budget!


Amazon funny business....   Authors' Guild reports that the New York Times reports that, "In an apparent dispute over sales terms with big five publisher Hachette Book Group, Amazon is slowing delivery of select Hachette titles."

Hachette authors who see particular formats (ebooks haven't been reported as affected) of their own print works affected by long restocking times might like to contact AG.



Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry

Thursday, May 08, 2014

Blood as the Fountain of Youth?

The blood of young mice has been shown to reverse certain symptoms of aging in the bodies of elderly mice:

Young Blood

The process isn’t quite so simple as a blood transfusion. The circulatory systems of the paired animals were surgically conjoined. Still, here’s a scientific rationale for vampirism.

Vampires could be people who either have the innate ability to process the blood components that make the mouse experiment work or, thanks to futuristic science, have undergone genetic manipulation to grant them that ability.

The experiment reminds me of the short story “Good Lady Ducayne” by Mary Braddon, published in 1896. An innocent young woman takes a job as companion to the rich old lady of the title. Previous companions haven’t lasted long; they all mysteriously wasted away. A doctor who becomes romantically involved with the heroine discovers Lady Ducayne’s secret. An unscrupulous physician in her pay has been transfusing her companions’ blood into her veins to maintain her vitality. In 1896, this tale was purely speculative fiction, because consistently successful blood transfusion hadn’t yet been achieved (blood types not having been discovered). The possibility seems to have been “in the air,” since Lucy in DRACULA receives four transfusions. Fred Saberhagen’s THE DRACULA TAPE suggests that incompatible blood types, not the Count’s visits, actually caused her death. To readers of later decades, the notion that a blood transfusion could bestow youthful vigor on the recipient sounded as pseudoscientific as Van Helsing’s belief that the blood of strong, brave men (regardless of more tangible physiological factors) could save a vampire’s victim—until now. Science sometimes validates fiction’s crazy ideas!

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Tuesday, May 06, 2014

Reviews 7 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Reviews 7
by 
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

With Volume 8 in her Alien Series, Gini Koch is opening out her canvas to reveal a huge story behind her story.

It fits with the theme of "What's Really Going On Here?"

And oh, given the current political season in progress, you just have to be asking yourself that question about your real world experiences.  Nothing is as it seems.

Against the backdrop of our "real" world, these novels become even funnier.

Yes, they are Action-Romance, but they are also fraught with humor just as Star Trek was (and is, and will be, I expect.)

Last week, I posted the Index to a long series of long posts on Theme-Worldbuilding Integration:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/04/index-to-theme-worldbuilding.html

Koch's ALIEN Series is a marvelous example of what you can do with a well-integrated junction of theme and worldbuilding.

Koch has taken one character, Kitty Kat, given her a "life-story" or recurring theme and a coping strategy that works on a vast variety of problems life throws at her.

From that firm platform, Koch has built out a huge universe.  In Volume 8, we are getting a glimpse of a universe behind these stories as large, thematically rich, historically relevant, and philosophically sizzling as E. E. Smith's Lensman Series.

When Lensman was first published, you couldn't have Romance in a galactic action story.  E. E. Smith (Doc Smith) did it, though.  The Lensman romance inspired me to write SFR, and now Gini Koch has taken it all one step further.  She has built a world based on the most modern theories of space-time, and revealed the philosophical questions those theories ask.

This structure would collapse (e.g. become boring, incomprehensible, nonsensical, or meaningless) if it didn't have this integrated platform underneath the drama.

The setting is contemporary Earth -- with excursions to other planets.  But mostly the plot devices include incursions into Earth's environment from other planets.

Then bit by bit over the first 8 (of what I hope will be many more) novels, the larger universe outside Earth is revealed.

In Alien Research, a new character is introduced whose existence doesn't change the Situation -- but does give us an AHA! moment when we finally begin to understand "what's going on" here.

You might want to look at my review posted on Amazon:



From a technical, craft standpoint, you can study these novels as examples of a manuscript which I see as in need of perhaps as much as 20% line-cutting.  There are wordy phrases, dialogue loops, and speeches that could be rewritten to be more incisive dialogue.

But the plotting is exemplary, the visuals are penetrating, the cast of characters is huge but each is vividly drawn so you do remember them with only the slightest prompting, and the main character is someone you might actually like to BE.

This is a great series, and after eight huge novels, still shows signs of becoming greater.

The ALIEN SERIES is Science Fiction Romance at the genre's best.

Generation V by M. L. Brennan is a Vampire Novel I might have missed.



I met M. L. Brennan as she was signing autographs at Worldcon in San Antonio in 2013, and only just got around to reading the book she autographed for me, Generation V.

Now I see there's another one available on Amazon:



I'm thrilled, but I haven't read IRON NIGHT yet.

Generation V is tightly crafted, smoothly written, well paced, and an all around satisfying read, whether you like Vampire Romance or not.  Though romance isn't in focus in this novel, the potential is there.  More than Vampire Romance, though, the potential of this series is for Alien Romance -- the women in this hero's life are not, hmmm, all human.

Although Generation V is a Vampire novel, urban fantasy with a dark and bloody side to it, the overall tone of the point of view character's take on the world is more on the "light" side.

The main character's name is Fortitude, and he definitely has that virtue. 

His family is rather typical of today's urban fantasy vampires -- bloody, murderous, and blythe about the supernatural. 

There is not a lot of deep substance showing in this first novel.  None of the characters seem to be interested in puzzling out "what is really going on" -- which in this case would be an intersection of the fantasy/magic world of mythic creatures with our everyday Earth (instead of aliens from outer space, as Gini Koch is dealing with).

But the potential for such depths of mystical theory are wound deep into the springboard of this first novel.

Fortitude is well educated, but has a lot to learn.  He has skills, talents and abilities that can be "re-purposed" (you did read my review of ALIEN RESEARCH on Amazon, didn't you?) just as Kitty Kat has.

He is a fish out of water and does not know it (yet). 

In this first novel, Fortitude begins to come into his heritage as a Vampire, and learns how vampires are made. 

Generation V also gives us a hint of the politics of supernatural creatures co-existing among humans, and that has a potential to rival Washington D. C.

If the theme-worldbuiding integration is done as well for this new fictional world as Gini Koch has managed to do so far, M. L. Brennan has a winner on her hands.

You will want to be in on the ground floor to watch this universe being built.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Thursday, May 01, 2014

Stem Cell Breakthrough

Researchers in South Korea and New York have independently succeeded in using embryo cloning to produce stem cells genetically matched to specific patients:

Stem Cell Breakthrough

The article compares and contrasts embryo cloning with IPS (induced pluripotent stem) cells as a method of creating stem cells. In the latter process, the “clock” of adult cells is “turned back” to enable them to be reprogrammed into whatever types of cells are needed. Some experts believe embryonic stem cells are superior to IPS cells for various reasons; however, embryonic cloning is controversial and limited by the availability of human ova. Researchers, as one would expect, state emphatically that they have no plans to grow human individuals from cloned embryos.

This process sounds much less Frankenstein-like than the artificial organ production method in vintage science fiction such as Heinlein’s future worlds. In many of those novels, an entire, full-grown duplicate body is grown as a source of replacement organs. In one of Heinlein’s Lazarus Long books, Lazarus saves his mother’s life and brings her from the twentieth century into the distant future without disturbing the time stream, by substituting a cloned double of her at the instant of her recorded death. This doppelganger has never had consciousness; it’s physically adult but never mentally awakened, basically a mannequin made of flesh. Stopping to reflect on this incident might arouse qualms about the ethics of creating a fully formed human body, even a mindless one, solely for the purpose of killing it.

It seems distinctly less ethically problematic, for therapeutic purposes, to grow particular tissues and organs in vitro rather than produce a whole body to harvest organs from. More convenient and versatile, less expensive, and probably simpler, too. One exception might be—if such a procedure ever becomes possible—brain transplants. An aging or terminally ill rich person might have a youthful body grown in a lab and have his or her brain transferred into it. The ethical problem of creating a complete human body (even though never intended to become a conscious individual) simply to dismantle it for parts wouldn’t apply if the new body is designed as the vehicle for a fresh lease on life.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Index To Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Posts by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Index To Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Posts
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

As readers of this Tuesday blog on writing craft have noticed, I focus on THEME as the bedrock of a writer's craft.

Most writers, especially the best ones, never think about or notice theme in their work because the underlying, cohesive and coherent theme is always supplied by the subconscious.

The Integration series of posts that discuss integrating theme into various other skills are designed to train your subconscious so that it will do this job for you, and do it without attracting your attention -- so you can just tell your story.

A lot of the posts on this Tuesday blog are devoted to, or just mention, Worldbuilding.

The single most necessary skill in worldbuilding (creating a fictional world against which to tell your story) is theme.

Even if you are working in contemporary settings, you are creating for the reader a "Hollywood-ized version" of their reality, a dedicand cut through the side of reality that reveals its internal structure.

That "angle" on reality, that cut through to reveal the inner mechanism, is the source of your theme.  It is the show-don't-tell of your theme.

And it is subtle.  One tiny detail of your worldbuilding out of place, one tiny thing that clashes with your theme, and the reader/viewer is thrown right out of the fictional world. 

That foundation of suspension of disbelief is built upon a smooth, seamless integration of theme and worldbuilding.

The critical part of what a writer does to create verisimilitude in worldbuilding is done by observing what goes on in the real world, and noticing how it all might seem to their target audience.  Studying the world from various points of view is the main exercise, and these posts walk you through the method of observing, then thinking through where these elements can go in a piece of fiction. 

Dramatic effect and emotional impact is heightened without melodrama when your writing is done with the discipline acquired from such study.

This is the series of posts illustrating what goes on inside a writer's mind when creating such an integrated set of ideas. 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/09/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-1.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/09/theme-worldbuilding-integraton-part-2.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/09/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-3.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/09/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-4.html

http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/10/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-5.html

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-7.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/01/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-8.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/10/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-9.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/11/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-10.html -- Is Government Form Irrelevant?

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/04/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-11.html -- Is "Why is it wrong to blame the victim?"
I may have to update this Index post with future parts listed

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/05/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-12.html

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 13 Authority, Responsibility, and Power in Alien Romance
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/05/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-13.html

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 14 - Selling The Happily Ever After Ending
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/06/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-14.html

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 15 - What Is At Stake
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/09/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-15.html

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 16 - Scientific Evidence For The Happily Ever After
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/09/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-16.html

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 17 - Depicting Prophecy
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/11/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-17.html

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 18 - Creating A Galactic History
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/12/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-18.html

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 19 - A Stitch In Time
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/03/theme-worldbuilding-integration-stitch.html

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 20 - Why Love Matters (readers love a mystery)
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/05/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-20.html

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 21 - The Couple's First Fight (privacy as key to HEA)
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/06/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-21.html



Here is an early post on Worldbuilding and Art:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/02/worldbuilding-and-art.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Code Your World

When I started writing in 1993, and had not decided whether I wanted to write science fiction or Romance, I heard of a program called Kepler. As I recall, one was supposed to be able to design alien worlds and check them out.

I never found it.

However, this week I found codecademy. One of the starter lesson sets allows the rookie coder to try world-building.

Look for it here: http://www.codecademy.com/learn

For one reason or another (unless you are already tech savvy) you might be glad you gave it a try. I am.

My apologies for an ultra short blog. I'm preparing for a discussion of the DMCA for the USPTO, with especial emphasis on the benefits of standardizing Take Down notices.

Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Spoilers Welcome?

I finally got around to reading John D. MacDonald’s vintage SF novel THE GIRL, THE GOLD WATCH, AND EVERYTHING (my curiosity spurred by Spider Robinson’s LADY SLINGS THE BOOZE, in which the villain possesses a similar time-freezing device). It occurred to me that this is one of those works it’s impossible for most people to experience the way the original audience did. Nowadays almost anybody who picks up this novel knows the gold watch stops time for the user, not least because the back cover blurb gives away the secret. I doubt the first edition back in the early 1960s had a similar spoilery blurb. The truth about the watch would have come as a surprise—one that isn’t revealed until exactly the middle of the book!

Likewise, everybody knows Count Dracula is a vampire. In 1897, though, before the Count’s name became synonymous with vampirism, Stoker’s first readers wouldn’t necessarily have known. True, the reviews gave away the secret, but not all book buyers read reviews. Those who approached the story “cold” would have shared the suspense of Jonathan Harker’s bewilderment and dawning horror in the first couple of chapters. Today the names “Jekyll and Hyde” mark a universally recognized shorthand phrase for a divided personality. Every film of Stevenson’s book that I’ve seen assumes from the beginning that the viewer knows Mr. Hyde is Dr. Jekyll’s alter ego and shows us the dramatic scene of his potion-induced transformation. The original, though, has a long build-up to the climactic revelation; we don’t learn the truth until near the end of the story. FRANKENSTEIN has a frame story from the viewpoint of an arctic explorer who has no idea what the dying Victor Frankenstein is doing in the frozen north or who the grotesque figure he's pursuing is. Presumably Mary Shelley’s original readers would have been in the dark on these points, too.

Lots of “spoilers” for classic literature float freely in the popular culture ether. You don’t have to read or watch Shakespeare to know Romeo and Juliet die in the end. Even people who’ve never seen CITIZEN KANE know Rosebud is a sled.

Do modern audiences lose something in reading or viewing a classic work with foreknowledge not available to the original naïve audience? Or does the fun of savoring the clues planted by the author, with full awareness of what they’re pointing to, make up for the absence of surprise? These are two different kinds of reading (or viewing) pleasure. As far as newly released works are concerned, some readers and viewers don’t mind spoilers. I’m one of those (within reason—I don’t want to know the murderer in advance the first time I read a mystery). On the other end of the spectrum, someone I know prefers not to read reviews or even jacket copy, wanting to approach a book with as few preconceptions as possible. I always read the cover copy and often seek out reviews, even for a book I know I’ll like because it’s by a favorite author. I’ve come across online comments about fans of the TV series GAME OF THRONES who get upset if exposed to spoilers about upcoming plot points, while others reply with some exasperation that these details have been available in the books for several years now. Is there a statute of limitations on spoiler warnings?

Cartoon I saw somewhere, ages ago: One spouse is reading THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH in bed. Other spouse: “The Allies win. Now turn off the light.”

In other news, researchers in the UK have produced artificially cultured blood, grown from stem cells, ready to be tested on patients. One step closer to the “TruBlood” product that makes it possible for vampires to live openly among us, as they do in the Sookie Stackhouse series and many other fictional universes:

Scientists to Test Artificial Blood

As that series demonstrates, the mere fact that vampires can get along without preying on innocent victims doesn’t mean social interaction between living and undead will automatically become friendly. Lots of adjustments are required, leading to an abundance of story complications.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

When Should You Give Up On A Manuscript Part 4 - What To Do After You Give Up by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

When Should You Give Up On A Manuscript
Part 4
What To Do After You Give Up
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Here are the previous parts of this series on when to give up on a manuscript.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/04/when-should-you-give-up-on-manuscript.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/04/when-should-you-give-up-on-manuscript_8.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/04/when-should-you-give-up-on-manuscript_15.html

Last week, in Part 3 we looked in detail at procedures to create a "wrecking ball" to demolish any brick wall your subconscious creates that prevents you from finishing a manuscript.

Bottom line is, if you can finish the first draft, you can let your subconscious off the hook, no matter how unpublishable or unusable that first draft might be.

But finish it you must.

If you intend to make a living at writing, either fiction or non-fiction, you can't afford to train your subconscious to present you with unpublishable ideas then just abandon you to flounder around aimlessly.  If you let your lazy or spoiled-brat subconscious off the hook that easily, you will starve, get evicted, etc.  There's no unemployment insurance for writers.

You must produce publishable words, every day, at all costs.  It is just like having a factory job where you have to put Part 12 into an assembly of 58 Parts, you have to show up on time, produce precision work, and get out of the way of the next shift of workers.  Or you are fired.

That's what publishing is (or always has been -- this is changing fast)

See my series on Marketing Fiction In A Changing World:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/03/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_11.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/03/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/02/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_25.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/02/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_18.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/02/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/03/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/03/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_18.html

Publishing is an assembly line, and the writer has a spot on that assembly line.  You are not at the beginning, nor at the end, and you don't have the "middle" spot either.  But if you don't do your job, nobody else can do theirs and earn their daily bread.

Marketing is a different subject, but it does converge on this subject -- giving UP on a project, and how to do it gracefully as well as profit from the disaster.

The big, international publishers, the writers organizations, and every component of the marketing chain are in serious turmoil, reconsidering how fiction is delivered.  I've been watching some discussions on LinkedIn.  Change is in the air.

Don't take your eye off the business end of the move to Streaming and away from Cable.  If you don't understand the import of that, read some history on the advent of Cable (the sneering was incredible), and look at audience share figures before, during, and after that transition.  Then think about Satellite delivery, now the internet.  All of that matters, because what is a usable project for one delivery system is unusable in another.

So now we need to consider what to do with a project your subconscious prompted you to dive into, then smashed you against a brick wall (for whatever reason).  Now you have taken your subconscious in hand, firmly rubbed its  nose in the mess it made (see Part 3 in this series for how to do that), and you have finished the manuscript's first draft by sheer force of will power.

Now what?

Look around at the available markets -- in the few weeks it takes to write a novel, the market has morphed a couple times already.

What was unusable three months ago may be just what they are screaming for now.

If you do not see a market that would be appropriate for the piece you have produced (even with some considerable rewriting), you may have to give up on this project for now.

If you do see someplace you'd never considered marketing your work before, you should investigate because your subconscious (though it fought bitterly) may have guided you to your bread-and-butter market.

Now a bread-and-butter market isn't necessarily what you, personally, want to be known to be writing.  For example, the wife of a professional cleric might not want to have her married name bandied about in Erotica circles -- or her husband might not.

That's what Pen Names are for, and I gave you the link to the entry on pen names last week. 

Usually, a writer who uses pen names makes their daily living from one pen name, and does that matters to the heart and soul under a different pen name. 

Artistically, you might think that when you put your heart and soul into a work, it should be your hottest product in the market place.  Sometimes that's how it works, but sometimes not.

Keep an open mind on this subject, and in a few decades you might want to converge the pen-names you've established into one byline.  But you may find the fans of one pen name just don't have any interest in the product of another.  That's marketing!

So if you find an open market which this ruined mess of a salvaged manuscript could go to (maybe with a little rewriting), then polish it up, proof it, take beta-comments, fix inconsistencies, and submit. 

Sometimes, if you have an Agent for one genre, that agent just won't want to handle this other genre or media delivery. 

Many writers have several agents, one for books, one for screenplays, one for graphic novels, one for foreign rights -- there are a lot of specialties now, and I'm sure new agent specialties will emerge as we re-design this system to fit the modern world.

Some agent contracts preclude your submitting a work all by yourself -- be sure not to offend an agent who's bringing you work by not-looping them on this decision.

So, if you see a market, send this orphan work to market.  If it sells, fine, if not OK.

By taking it to market, you are teaching your subconscious that the messes it makes will become public.  This will be a major deterrent to future messes.

If your agent or an editor rejects the project, that's OK because it still trains your subconscious to work professionally. 

After it's been rejected -- or if you found no potential market, after you've finished trying to find a way to market it -- what do you do?

This is now a manuscript that used to be put "in the bottom drawer."

Of course, we don't have drawers in our computers, but we do have folders.

You need a directory tree entry called something like "unpublished." 

Leave yourself a note regarding what has to be done to this manuscript to polish it for market -- and what elements it contains that labels it as a certain genre, what might be deleted to change that genre signature, and anything else you've been thinking about it.

Then put it AWAY in this "bottom drawer.'

As I said, the market is changing.  This morphing market is changing more drastically than ever in my professional lifetime, but not any more than say, the advent of movable type, cheap paper, railroad transportation, Color Cover Printing. 

The way the world around us changes does affect what kind of fiction we want, and how we find and access it. 

So in a couple of years, or a few, or perhaps a couple decades, that particular story may be suitable for a brand new market, requiring only another draft to be salable.

That has never happened to me, personally (though I know people who have had it happen).  But nothing I've written has yet gone to waste, though I have some pieces that have markets and I have no time to bring them up.  So I have a pending folder.

Some of the early material that I produced that is demonstrably unpublishable is posted online at simegen.com in the School section or in /sgfandom  section, as lessons.

Your detritus may prove useful in that way as well, so don't let it become lost.

The most likely use for detritus after you give up on it ever being publishable is as a source.

Yes, a Source.

This kind of detritus is like Still Tailings (the parts of a distillation that come first or last, while the pure stuff comes in the middle of the distillation.)

Or it is like gold ore rather than a gold nugget panned from a stream.

It is raw material filled with the active ingredients that are of the most value to you.

Never throw anything away.  Never burn a manuscript.  Never security-delete a manuscript, or notes on stories.  It is all valuable for something.

There's an opening scene clogging up the story flow in the middle of some mess you made.

There's a dynamite blow-off ending lurking in the first chapter of some throw-away mess.

There's a character whose story is your life's work, wandering through the edge of some unusuable garbage. 

Or it could be just a fragment of a character, a character-forming incident in some bit of nonsense you produced to fill a gap and force your subconscious to keep nose-to-grindstone.

During that exercise of Will Power and Endurance to inculcate self-discipline into your subconscious, it will get mad enough at you to spit out what is really bothering it.  But you won't recognize that golden nugget at first -- could take decades for your Aha! moment.

When it finally dawns on you, you will want to look at that old stuff again, so don't delete it.

After you've looked over what you wrote, don't despair.  Yes, it's AWFUL - but nevermind.  What you intended to inject into that character, that scene, that theme, the passion and life that suddenly surfaces now, decades later, milled to a fine gloss by your now-trained and skilled subconscious, is very probably your Masterwork.

I've seen that happen to other writers.

The story you were born to contribute to this world, the story the world really needs to absorb, is present in those first haphazard story ideas, those aborted works, and those brick walls.

The brick wall happens because of lack of craft skills you have forgotten mastering.

You know the cliche, "She's forgotten more about X than you'll ever know."

A skill mastered and forgotten is a skill that has sunk into the subconscious and trained it to produce fine work.

Of course, that works the opposite way, too.  If you train your subconscious to bad habits, it produces useless products, or even self-destructive behavior.  Sloppy thinking does not produce a neat life.

So train your subconscious by taking a wrecking ball to any brick wall it runs you into, finish everything you start (even if awkwardly or ineptly).  Remember, writing is in the rewriting. 

Marketing may very well be in the re-marketing.  That's why there is such a thing as "re-branding" -- and very nice livings to  be made in that profession! 

Launch your career in professional writing with the full knowledge that in order to reach the goal you saw at first, you must learn and practice new craft skills every day.

Don't worry about running out of skills to master.  The tech evolution we're in will continue to supply new skills for story tellers throughout your entire life time.

When you've acquired the necessary skills, you will know what to do with that half-baked Idea that ended up in your computer-bottom-drawer.



Just remember, Writing Is A Performing Art -- just like dance, music, acting.  It is all about The Beat, the rhythm of life.  March to your own drummer. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Saturday, April 19, 2014

"Permissionless Innovation" and Human Rights.

Every weekend, I mean to write a review of Anne Jamison's excellent book, "Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over The World" (which I highly recommend) and each weekend, something comes up.

This weekend, I received a time-sensitive message from thecopyrightalliance.org concerning
http://document.netmundial.br/1-internet-governance-principles/ where a draft set of Internet Governance Principles is open for public comment, just for this weekend.

This is the substance of the email sent to me:

Quote: "Discussions are ongoing about the future of the Internet, and it's important that artists' voices are heard.

NetMundial, a global multistakeholder process, is meeting Monday, April 21 to discuss a Draft Outcome Document on Internet Governance. That document, available at  http://document.netmundial.br/  shows no trace of recognition of the importance of intellectual property protection for a healthy Internet ecosystem.  Paragraph 13, for example, says:

“The ability to innovate and create has been at the heart of the remarkable growth of the Internet and it has brought great value to the global society. For the preservation of its dynamism, Internet governance must continue to allow permissionless innovation through an enabling Internet environment.”

Another aspect of the draft that deserves comment is paragraph 2 through 8, dealing with Human Rights, which lists several rights spelled out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but omits any reference to Article 27(2), guaranteeing authors and creators the right to benefit from their moral and material rights of authorship.

The draft is currently open to public comment.
 ..........

Public comments must be received by Monday, April 21, 8 am EST, to help shape the final document. We think it’s vital that artists and creators speak up during this process.

To post a comment, go to http://document.netmundial.br/, click on “Internet Governance Principles”, scroll down to the paragraph on which you wish to comment, and click on the comment balloon on the right. You will need to provide your name (which could include affiliation) and e-mail address.
" Unquote.

Disclaimer: I did edit the copyright alliance email for brevity.

After jumping off the deep end, metaphorically speaking, it occurred to me to google "permissionless innovation." Naturally, my understanding of "permissionless innovation" was nowhere to be found on the Google front page, but it wouldn't be, would it?

Google prefers "permissionless innovation" and does an excellent job of convincing judges that scanning authors' copyrighted works and displaying large chunks of the works free to the public and for their own profit is "Fair Use" or "Transformative."

As I pointed out in an earlier blog, this sort of "innovation" is a lot less harmless than Google's apologists would have one believe... at least to those hoping to earn a living from their writing.  It is regrettable that Judge Denny Chin changed his mind about whether or not it is preferable for authors to "opt in" when their works are being scanned, published, and distributed on the internet, rather than "opt  out".

Pirate sites run on an "opt out" basis. The process of opting out is prescribed under the DMCA, and is otherwise known as a Take Down Notice (or NOCI if one is dealing with EBay.)

"Opting Out" is not the same as "Opting In." The "permissionless" innovator profits for as long as the copyright owner is unaware of the ongoing exploitation. Electronic works that have been disseminated across the internet by one bad actor can never be returned or destroyed, and as long as authors (or musicians) are disqualified from being called a "class", most authors and musicians are financially unable to afford justice or compensation. The best they can expect is that the exploitation stops for a short time.

One interesting blog should be read in the interests of fairly interpreting what the tech crowd think of permissionless innovation. Some think of Permissionless Innovation in a sense of being able to just do whatever they wish on the internet without having to obtain a permit from any regulatory body.
http://techliberation.com/2013/03/04/who-really-believes-in-permissionless-innovation/

If one means "Permitless" when one discusses "Permissionless" perhaps the narrower term would be preferable.

The Internet Governance Principles document does talk about Human Rights, but the definitions of Human Rights omit all reference to any rights of authors, musicians, artists, photographers, movie makers etc to not be exploited. See paragraphs 2 - 8.

As one commentator on paragraph 13 points out, "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 27,
(2) states, “Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.” 

Copyright is under attack, and to those who would tell copyright owners, "Suck it up," I would point out that so far, one does not have a Human Right to free entertainment.

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

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Cartoon: A Writer's Journey

Have you all seen this "Pearls Before Swine" comic strip from Sunday?

Pearls Before Swine

Funny, with much truth! I can especially identify with the procrastination part. Particularly since we got the puppy (now eleven months old) last summer. It seems that no sooner do I coax or trick myself into starting a writing session, she wants to go out. And then, since I'm up anyway, I might as well get a couple of other things done. . . .

I sometimes tell myself I should be grateful that, because of her, I don't have to worry about the dire health consequences allegedly caused by sitting still too long at a stretch.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt