Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Theme-Story Integration Part 7 - Happily Ever After WHAT exactly?

Theme-Story Integration
Part 7
Happily Ever After WHAT exactly?

Previous Parts in this series are indexed at:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/05/index-to-theme-story-integration.html

Theme is what you, the writer, have to say on a topic, and thus includes broad hints about what the topic is as well as about who, exactly, you are. What you SAY, in all instances in life, reveals more about you than about the topic or person discussed.

Story is the sequence of impacts Events have on the fictional Character who is the main driver of the plot (the hero, the protagonist, the Main Character).

The Character "arcs" (or changes) under the impact of the Events which form the "because chain" of the Plot.

Things happening aren't a plot, and they aren't a story, and they aren't a novel.  A list of things that happen isn't even an outline, but it is a necessary ingredient in an outline. 

PLOT is a list of things that happen TO SOMEONE, i.e. that IMPACT a Character and prompt that character to re-examine his/her assumptions and change their mind about some topic -- e.g. to learn some new information, test it experimentally, and integrate that new information into their view of the universe from which they infer that if they DO THIS, then it will cause THAT to happen.

Cause/effect is the foundation of modern civilization, and has its origins in Ancient Hellenistic thinking, but was formulated by Roger Bacon.

-----quote from Wikipedia------
Roger Bacon OFM, also known by the scholastic accolade Doctor Mirabilis, was a medieval English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empiricism. Wikipedia
Born: 1214, Ilchester, United Kingdom
Died: 1292, Oxford, United Kingdom
Education: University of Oxford
Nationality: English, British
--------end quote-------

Yet an attitude toward Romance genre widely held across this modern civilization is that the Happily Ever After never happens -- empirically established by anecdotal evidence.  Study nature through empiricism - essentially means anecdotal evidence trumps statistics.

So since we all know Romance never leads to the impossible "HEA" - well, then we don't waste money on  statistical studies that might prompt revision of that idea.

I can wonder if any grad students have been denied Ph.D. thesis go-aheads because their advisors knew they'd never convince a board that the HEA is real, attainable, and actually quite common even today.

So I find it odd that objections to the idea that the HEA is more than silly-girl fantasy never ask, "Happily Ever After What?" 

What Event divides a life from miserable to happy? 

Why is such a fraction of our current population stuck in misery?  Why is the divorce rate so high, the marriage rate dwindling? 

Historians and philosophers have often attributed war and wanton destruction that it causes to a high number of un-married young men plus widespread poverty-misery-oppression. 

Juxtapose that ides to the glorified Hollywood World War II love stories, and yes, as I keep harping on the Classic Helen of Troy story.

We touched on Helen of Troy again in How Do You Know If You've Written A Classic?

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/02/how-do-you-know-if-youve-written_25.html

Note that ultra-magnified passionate love that drives men (or women) to feats of derring-do, risking all for Love, is usually coupled to obstacles even more magnified. 

Our war-torn world has millions faced with a lifetime of nothing-but-obstacles, and as the proportion of young men burgeons, we see them leading the charge OUT of one country, seeking to circumvent the wall of obstacles to a good life.

When society melts down, the fabric of law and order collapses, Gangs develop, strong men, alpha-males (or wannabe alphas) gather subordinates and preach takeover, usually in the name of protection.

We see things like MS-13 exported to broader territories where fewer obstacles seem evident.

And then the moving population meets resistance from the entrenched population (think about the Germans just after they invaded France in WWII - and what the everyday French did about that).

And you have CONFLICT, the essence of story. 

Story ends where the Main Character's internal conflict is resolved.

CONFLICT RESOLUTION is the ENDING.

That's a major rule of drama evident in the oldest Greek Plays. 

The audience is grabbed, drawn into the story, fascinated, held through all the ups and downs, and finally RELEASED to go their own way as the "hook" conflict stated at the opening sentence is resolved.

Resolution then is the essence of Story.

A good story is remembered for its resolution -- for example, the tragedy formula where the most beloved character dies. 

The most potent tragedy usually involves death-for-no-apparent-reason -- the collateral damage done by war when explosions hit a hospital and kill newborns.

These giant Events are usually regarded as on the "dark" end of the spectrum, where Romance is on the "light" end, just short of comedy.

The mixing of War/Action genre with Romance (and yes, even comedy) captured two generations of Americans -- The Greatest Generation and The Silent Generation, while even Baby Boomers were generally enamored by the genre mixture.

That being my observation, I'm even more puzzled why Publishers catering to the groups called Gen X and Gen Y so resist the Cross-Genre Science Fiction Romance, Paranormal Romance, etc.

Science Fiction was (before Star Trek) considered the literature to entertain adolescent males -- never of interest to females. Thus, it was called "neck up science fiction" (purely intellectual conflicts with no "sappy stuff" that so distresses early adolescent males).

Romance was considered only for adolescent girls.  It was all about attracting men, maybe a little about choosing which among the attracted was the best bet. The female lead character was never a Hero.  This made the entire genre of Romance, by definition, badly constructed literature. 

The world has changed as generations have rolled by.

But, though there is broad discussion of "generations" and the traits that define them, there is no consensus on where the dividing line is, or what exactly the common trait is. 

Look at this article, one of many that comes up on a Google Search. 

https://trend.pewtrusts.org/en/archive/winter-2018/foreword-how-are-generations-named

------quote------
No official commission or group decides what each generation is called and when it starts and ends. Instead, different names and birth year cutoffs are proposed, and through a somewhat haphazard process a consensus slowly develops in the media and popular parlance. Because generations are often shaped by specific events, their labels and spans sometimes differ from one country to another; here, I’ll focus on the U.S.

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

But it makes my point about Theme-Story Integration very well.  Generations are shaped by Events.

Those "Events" are the "What" that comes before the Ever After.

The adults that emerge from the currently war-torn Middle East will have an experience in common, and thousands of different responses to those experiences.

The adults who emerge through adolescence during this current strife-torn American Election series will be triumphant or crushed in spirit -- each half forming an audience for fiction writers who artistically rationalize the dominant (and often crippling) emotion. 

Remember, 8 years is time enough to pass through adolescence into the period of adulthood characterized by an ineffable certainty in one's own understanding of reality, the Twenties. 

That period of young adulthood ends with the first Saturn Return, at age 29, a "reality check" on life's chosen course. 

So we come to the Astrological definition of "generation" -- not exactly 20 years, but pretty close, give or take.


Here's a summary I did of how Generations affect the receptivity of your readership to particular Themes (which are statements of the nature of reality), all tied to positions of Pluto, Neptune and Uranus. 

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html

The astrological definition of Generation that I espouse explains why the media can't identify and tag a "generation" with a name and a trait in common. 

The "edges" of a generation are not clean-cut, as the Planet (OK, argue that with astronomers) Pluto tends to go back and forth several times over maybe a year or so.  This Retrograde Motion phenomenon (which is not real, but an artifact of sitting on a moving observation point) blurs out the precise line between those born with one tendency and those born with another.

Those born over the course of 2-4 years will be divided by having Pluto at the end ozone sign, or the beginning of another -- having the planet be "direct" in motion, or retrograde, and of course being placed in different Houses, with different personal (or fast moving, inner planets like Mercury or the Moon) in different aspects to Pluto.

And Pluto isn't the only factor defining Generations -- as Neptune and Uranus likewise take a long time to transit a sign and therefore large numbers are born with the planet in that sign. One-Twelfth (12 signs, 12 Houses) of those born at any given time, in any given place, share a House position -- but the fast moving planets and the Moon can change a lot, so you get distinct individuals reacting to similar Events all in idiosyncratic ways.

Yeah, it's complicated, and even identical twins don't have the SAME natal chart, or the same life. 

So in your reader's real-reality of everyday existence, Events they had no effect on, did not cause, could not stop, DEFINE who they have to become among all the potential identities they must choose from.

The choice they make from the menu limited by external Events may determine whether they survive to grow up -- or not.

Your readership is composed of the survivors -- and yes, survivors of trauma.  Adolescence is strewn with trauma that shapes the young adult to be.  Those Events seem ginormous to the adolescent, but the 40-year-old can only scoff at the trivialness of the matter.

That's true only of our very sheltered teens.  Those growing up in the rubble of warfare, imbued with hatred of the purely external forces ruining their lives, are dealing with another level of reality.  But even some of them will be potential Romance readers -- because they retain the ability to dream of a better day.

So out there in the real world, your potential readers may not believe in the HEA ending, so you must convince them. To do that, first grasp their view of the world, find the barriers they face that prevents the conceptualization of the HEA, then reduce that barrier using techniques in this book:

The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone's Mind Kindle Edition by Jonah Berg

https://www.amazon.com/Catalyst-How-Change-Anyones-Mind-ebook/dp/B07THCZ626/

Use these techniques, combined in different ways, and you can convince most readers that your Character is a real human being (or an Alien with enough in common with humans to make an excellent mate).

One barrier your potential reader may face in believing in the HEA is a lack of seeing how to overcome the obstacles in their own life, and maybe even why bother battling the obstacles? 


We discussed this book in a previous blog:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/05/theme-story-integration-part-5-how-to.html
Now we are looking at how PLOT in a novel is the CATALYST that kicks the protagonist into reassessing opinions and changing those opinions, thus resolving an internal conflict. Once you've done one of those resolutions, you learn to hunt down and change other subconscious opinions that have been making you miserable.

If there's no HEA, why strive to overcome vicissitudes?  Now, that thought-train leads to depression, inaction, and despair. 

A good Romance novel can inspire those treading water in a well of hopeless despair.  Make the HEA real, and also realistic, and some readers will catch fire and roar out into their own world to conquer all.

And that's the key idea - Love Conquers All.  It's really true,  It really does.  But few today believe it.  Use THE CATALIST to convince them, and spread happiness.

So how do you do that with a novel?

It's the Main Character, the protagonist, the Hero, who does the convincing.

How can a fictional character do that? 

By overcoming an internal barrier right before the reader's eye, and becoming a CHANGED PERSON. 

That is, by bringing the reader into the story of the character's life, walking the reader through the character's story arc to and through the resolution of the Character's internal conflict.

The "ever after" referred to in the HEA is the period of life lived after that major internal conflict is resolved.  The novel ends, the story ends, the plot ends, and "ever after" begins. 

Ever After is the period when the internal conflict, the eternal pain that can't be faced, that has been suppressed behind psychological barriers, has been resolved and no longer exists. 

Life isn't painful or scary or offensive any more.  The stakes aren't too high.  That's where "happy" can maybe begin.

That happiness is not an uneventful experience, nor one without confrontations with more conflicts.  But the Life Events, the milestone events like burying a parent, naming a baby, sending a kid off to college, are confronted and resolved without having to battle internal barriers.

What is an internal barrier? 

Popular psychology has tagged these things with various names so there are hundreds of good books talking about overcoming your neuroses.

Each generation names these neuroses uniquely because each generation feels they are the first and only ones to ever have this experience.

So we have "don't push my buttons" and "I'm going to find myself" and these days, "I'm offended by that" so therefore you can't do that.

Running through it all is "conform or die."  That is more a Saturn confronts Pluto phenomenon. 

So humans acquire these internal barriers which prevent changing opinions via teenage angst, twenties dreams shattered at age 29 (Saturn return), and relying on anecdotal evidence.

In the course of life, an individual will rise up and drive toward a goal, then meet up with that internal barrier.  If thwarted by their own psychological barrier, scars of earlier experiences, the individual may fail. If this has happened repeatedly, the individual may accept failure as inevitable and such goals unattainable.

This individual is in an INTERNAL CONFLICT. 

Walk this individual through a process of overcoming such a barrier by dragging them into the psyche of a fictional Character with a similar barrier, and the real-life of the individual could change.

The fictional character must not have the same internal barrier, or the same external goal to drive toward, or the same reasons for failing previously.  If they are too similar to the reader's personal plight, the novel just won't be interesting.

But create a model of the reader's reality, using the same shape barrier but different content, different reasons and different excuses, and the reader will be fascinated.

Without even knowing that he/she is applying a fictional lesson to real life, the reader may begin moving life ahead toward an HEA for real.

To reach happiness, we have to confront subconscious demons and drag them into the light of day, into conscious knowledge of what subconscious forces are driving us to self-sabotage, or mis-allocating resources, or whatever mistake we're making.

The journey to happiness is one of changing your own mind, and the catalyst might be a novel, a series, a particular writer's themes. 

If other people change your mind (as per the book, THE CATALYST), you don't come to happiness; you come to compliance.

Take your reader into a mind that the reader can see needs changing, and demonstrate how that mind changes itself, resolves its conflict with long-ago events, dissolves lingering scars, and releases a burgeoning and permanent happiness.

Happiness doesn't mean no challenges, no defeats, no cold, miserable, lonely nights.  Happiness means having the internal stuffings, the strength of character, the vision that brings resiliency in the face of vicissitudes.

For the science fiction reader, happiness means comprehending the mechanism of the world, being certain that when you do THIS, then that causes THAT to happen.  If you don't want that, then don't do this.

For the romance reader, happiness is capturing the high regard of the Soul Mate, requited love, a closed loop of love energy which imparts enough strength to withstand any vicissitudes.

Both genres require the resolution of an internal conflict, and a clear representation of the mechanism of cause-effect that links the resolution of internal conflicts to the resolution of external conflicts.

That is the portrait of reality that creates verisimilitude enough for an everyday reader to accept 6 impossible things before breakfast.

For both types of readers, happiness is having a model of the universe that actually works. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Sunday, June 14, 2020

"The Width Of The Buttocks" (NOT!)

It all comes down to profitable voyeurism, or spying, and it is all rooted in the many possible meanings of "beaming".

If you have a mobile phone, and most people do, you beam a lot, whether you know it or not, and around the world, what you beam is of profit and interest to governments, Silicon Valley, advertisers, and more...especially if you have Bluetooth.

Writing for Privacy Zone, a blog of the law firm Rothwell, Figg, Ernst & Manbeck PC, legal blogger Jenny L. Colgate discusses Facebook's request to the Ninth Circuit to reconsider the question, "Are Targeted Ads The Result Of Wiretapping?"
https://www.theprivacylaw.com/2020/05/are-targeted-ads-the-result-of-wiretapping-facebook-asks-the-ninth-circuit-to-reconsider/#page=1

Is it "wiretapping" when Facebook spies on a person who is not logged in to Facebook, who might not even have a Facebook account and therefore has never agreed to Facebook's terms, and who does not visit Facebook or one of Facebook's businesses?

Allegedly, Facebook manages to beam up data about such a person via the ubiquitous Facebook "plugins" that litter the internet. If you see a "Like" symbol on any page on the internet, and then check what tracking cookies have been added to your device, you'll see Facebook ones, like nits, sucking up your power and memory and beaming messages to Zuck.

They're not alone, and Jenny L. Colgate's colleague Jennifer B. Maisel recently reported with especial scrutiny on Bluetooth beacon technology that enables carriers of mobile phones --and also of Covid-19-- to beam warnings to each other, albeit, apparently only after they have passed on another unnoticed like ships in the night.

More sinister is the rise of the tracking apps in Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea, as examined for law firm Tay & Partners by legal bloggers  Lee Lin Li and Chong Kah Yee.
http://www.taypartners.com.my/en/index.php/covid-19-20200528

There's a whole lot of beaming going on, also compulsory bracelet wearing, and one wonders whether someone who did not voluntarily own a mobile phone would be allowed to go anywhere or do anything. Apparently, it might be a condition of employment that a worker sets up their own QR code for themself.

Finally, an update from Brian Murphy on the Instagram issue, that is, whether putting a copyrighted work on instagram means that you unwittingly allow all the internet to exploit your work without permission or payment as long as they "embed" your work with a linkback to Instagram.  Maybe not so fast....
https://advertisinglaw.fkks.com/post/102g8ym/instagram-and-embedding-photos-an-update-and-a-bombshell-from-instagram

Not "finally".  In case you didn't hear it, "inamebooks" is allegedly a phishing site. It allegedly does not have books. It wants names, addresses, credit card numbers.

Another alleged bad actor, Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive, has received two stern letters from Thom Tillis and a lawsuit from four publishers, so it is shutting down its piratical "Emergency Library".

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

Thursday, June 11, 2020

Gelatinous Houses

On the subject of alien-seeming animals inhabiting our own planet, consider the giant larvacean, undersea "gelatinous invertebrates" that look like "ghostly tadpoles" about the size of breakfast muffins:

Snot Palaces

Although the creature's photo brings to mind a jellyfish, it belongs to a different subphylum, the Tunicata. As far as I can gather from Wikipedia, they're mostly hermaphrodites, an efficient type of reproductive biology because any two members of the same species who happen to meet can produce offspring together. With bodies made mainly of water, larvaceans are filter feeders. They construct "houses" around their bodies by secreting mucus in the desired shape and blowing it up like a balloon. These delicate "snot palaces" (a nickname that belies their fragile beauty) have an inner and an outer house. The outer layer provides protection and filters water. The inner structure collects the food from the water. Since the creature's house gets clogged up quickly, it has to build a new one every couple of days. Despite the small size of the larvacean itself, its house can measure at large as one meter.

Would a larvacean's house be counted as part of its body, even though it gets frequently discarded and replaced? Animals such as snakes, after all, regularly molt their skins. The larvacean's "snot palace" isn't alive, but neither are mollusks' shells or our hair and fingernails, all of which tend to be thought of as body parts.

Could a creature composed mostly of water have a brain or a structure that serves as one? Hmm—neurons communicate by electricity, and water conducts electricity, so why couldn't a gelatinous invertebrate have an electrical network that performs brain functions? And couldn't any brain, if its environment demands higher functions for survival, develop sentience? Suppose a larvacean-like animal extruded a mucus "house" with a structure complex enough to support an intelligent electrical network? Of course, every time it replaced that structure, it would have to transfer over stored memories and skills. . . but if we can imagine a cloud of energy with sentience (as in more than one STAR TREK episode), we can imagine a mind built from water and mucus.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Tuesday, June 09, 2020

How Do You Know If You've Written A Classic Part 9 - A Film Worth Watching Again

How Do You Know If You've Written A Classic
Part 9
A Film Worth Watching Again 

Previous parts of this series are indexed here:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/03/index-to-how-do-you-know-if-youve.html

We've referenced Helen of Troy many times, and most recently in discussing James Clavell and Charles E. Gannon -- the epic love story from the male point of view where all male protection instincts drive the plot.  Helen of Troy was such a figure, inspiring men to war, to rescue, to heroic deeds.

We think of Helen of Troy as pre-historic, probably a legend even though archeologists have found Troy.

Maybe the story was just a legend, but it became a classic literary legend because it bespeaks an eternal attribute of human nature -- the lengths a Soul Mate will go to in order to reunite with his beloved.

The whole world, and all human history, has pivoted on the Soul Mate relationship many times.

This kind of story made Box Office history even in the B&W film day, and with modern digitization and streaming services, these old films are available  to the young.

Here is a short description of the film, DESIREE,
https://www.amazon.com/Desiree-Marlon-Brando/dp/B002BUELKM
seen long ago, seen again in 2020, compared with all the real and legendary history of the days of Napoleon Bonaparte.

The author, Anne Pinzow, is a reporter, film student, and published fiction author. The perspective is deeply informative for those seeking to replicate the Epic Romance the way Charles E. Gannon has in his Caine Riordan series.

https://www.amazon.com/Charles-E-Gannon/e/B001HO80WS

Here is Anne Pinzow's view of this old, epic film.

---quoting Anne Pinzow--------

I was watching one of my favorite movies which I haven't seen since I watched on my black and white TV at 1 in the morning when I was a kid. Desiree. It's a totally fictionalized, cleaned up and sanitized "true" story in that these characters actually did exist and something, sorta, kinda, if you squint, did happen.

What is true is that both Napoleon Bonaparte and Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, who became the King of Sweden were enamored by Desiree Clary, the daughter of a fabric merchant in the post French Revolution years. She was engaged to Bonaparte as he wanted her dowery, but he married Josephine for her political connections. Clary married Bernadotte and became the mostly absent Queen of Sweden and lived in Paris as she just did not fit in to the Swedish royals plus she hated the cold. Napoleon tried to use her to get Bernadotte to comply with his wishes and Bernadotte tried to use her to find out what Napoleon was up to.

Anyway, it's a fun movie, if you're not a fan of Napoleon Bonaparte.

So, I'm not talking about the real people and their characters but the movie people.

Both Bonaparte and Bernadotte were born to poor families, joined the Army and rose quickly up through the ranks because of their military successes. The difference is that, according to the movie, Bernadotte did not believe that peace and freedom for the rest of Europe could be achieved by war while Bonaparte played at wanting liberty, fraternity and equality but that it only could be achieved by killing everyone who opposed him.

In the end, by putting the asses of the members of his family on the thrones of Europe, including his own, he achieved, if briefly, what he wanted.

Bernadotte, by being merciful and releasing prisoners of war when the war was over or won, was offered the crown of Sweden as the country's royal line was too old, gone crazy, had no heirs.

In the end, because of his character, Napoleon died on Elba, losing everything and his "dynasty," lasted about 11 years, was later re-established by his nephew and lasted about 18 years.

Meanwhile Bernadotte's dynasty has been around for 200 years and the present king of Sweden is his direct descendant.

Their methods were exactly the same but their characters made all the difference.

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


Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Saturday, June 06, 2020

Jolly Rogers And False Flags

Let's start with the falsies.

I know, basically, that is Victoria's Secret.... falsies, that is. However, the piratical falsies are sites that promise to give away every book on Amazon or Goodreads, but what they really are after is the DMCA notice, where an author is so upset to find all her books being given away --apparently-- that she fires off a DMCA and gives the false pirates her name, address, email address, telephone number, signature. If they are lucky, she even tries to download a copy of her books for proof.

Such a site is Inamebooks.
It seems not to be legitimate. If you try to download a book, I hear, allegedly, you might instead receive malware and an entertaining image of a lady who encourages you to find her hole to keep you occupied while the malware does its embedding work.

Don't go there.

If you gave them your email address, watch out for emails and phone calls such as from 1-800-561-6189 purporting to be from Apple about a problem with your cloudflare or storage account. It's not. Don't bite.

The existence of sites like this, and others like it, owes much to the loopholes in the DMCA that holds OSPs and ISPs harmless for what they host.

Cloudflare.com, namecheap.com, safenames.net and amazonaws.com ought to be somewhat responsible but appear not to be.

There might be a remedy about to move at glacial pace through Congress. The legal bloggers Matthew Nigriny and John Gary Maynard III for Hunton Andrews Kurth opine on how much the DMCA favors ISPs and OSPs over copyright owners.
https://www.huntonak.com/images/content/6/7/v2/67187/copyright-office-finds-dcma-tilts-away-from-copyright-owners.pdf

Meanwhile, for more on bad behavior by Amazon:
https://www.authorsguild.org/where-we-stand/amazons-anticompetitive-history/

A real jolly roger appears to fly over the Internet Archive.  The brilliant and persistent --and real insight-sharing Victoria--Victoria Strauss covers the issue comprehensively.
https://accrispin.blogspot.com/2020/06/four-major-publishers-sue-internet.html

If your books are still being given away on an "Emergency" basis because the world needs free entertainment while authors do not need to eat and pay the rent during the same emergency, tell your Congressional representative or senator.... although, a little bird told me that Rand Paul and Ron Wyden are not sympathetic to ripped-off authors.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

Thursday, June 04, 2020

The Rules of Writing

Cory Doctorow's latest LOCUS column explores the issue of whether there are any truly unbreakable writing rules:

Rules for Writers

You're probably acquainted with the collection of "rules" he cites, the Turkey City Lexicon, to which he faithfully adhered for many years. It's a list of colorfully labeled errors into which writers can fall, many of them specific to science fiction:

Turkey City Lexicon

The page begins with a long introduction by Bruce Sterling about the origin and background of the Lexicon. The errors and frequently perpetrated SF tropes are divided into categories such as Words and Sentences, Plots, Common Workshop Story Types, etc. Some of the entries now familiar to most speculative fiction writers include: Tom Swifties (although I prefer to think of them as "Tom Swiftlies," in keeping with the adverbial theme), e.g., "I'm not lying," Pinocchio said woodenly. "Said-bookisms," substituting an outlandishly obtrusive dialogue tag for a simple "said," e.g., "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die," Goldfinger gloated. "Call a Rabbit a Smeerp," sticking an exotic name on a mundane animal without changing the creature in any material way. Hand waving, "An attempt to distract the reader with dazzling prose or other verbal fireworks, so as to divert attention from a severe logical flaw."

Doctorow's article links the topic of writing rules to Sterling's nonfiction book THE HACKER CRACKDOWN, leading into the hacker's task of analyzing "which devices were likeliest to contain a fatal error." Inherent difficulty—proneness to error—according to Doctorow, is what the writing "rules" are really all about. At some point in his career, he received the epiphany that the guidelines he'd revered for so long "weren't rules at all! They're merely things that are hard to do right!" In the hands of a Heinlein or an Asimov, for example, an "expository lump" can be fascinating. The rule against exposition is better understood as a warning that "most exposition isn't good, and bad exposition is terrible."

It's sometimes said that there's only one truly unbreakable rule in writing: "Don't be boring." Excellent advice, although hardly specific enough to put into practice. It's on the level of Heinlein's rules for how to succeed as an author, which go something like this: (1) Write. (2) Finish what you write. (3) Submit it to an editor who might buy it. (4) Keep sending it out until it sells. He also advised, "Never rewrite except to editorial order," by which I can't imagine he meant one should submit rough drafts without revision. He apparently meant a writer shouldn't bother rewriting an unsuccessful piece from scratch but should devote his or her energy to producing a new work. Yet Heinlein didn't consistently follow his own advice on that point, as demonstrated by his recent posthumously released book THE PURSUIT OF THE PANKERA. It comprises the abandoned original version of the novel published as THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST. The first half of the text has some differences in detail, while the second half radically diverges. (Personally, I prefer the original draft, which reads much more like "vintage Heinlein" than the fun but meandering, self-indulgent NUMBER OF THE BEAST.)

In short, no ironclad rules, just wise guidelines.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Tuesday, June 02, 2020

How Do You Know If You've Written A Classic Part 8 - What Do Readers Do

How Do You Know If You've Written A Classic
Part 8
What Do Readers Do?


Previous parts of this series are indexed at:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/03/index-to-how-do-you-know-if-youve.html

There are moments in life when a writer is objective about their own work, really the best judge of its value.  Those moments are rare, and some people never experience one so they believe there are none.

But you don't have to attain objectivity to figure out the value of what you've written.  Of course, there's the hurdle of getting published by a publisher who has captured the market you are writing for, but after that there are still many confusing stages.

One way to know if you've hit your readership is the feedback you get from readers -- today, it's Facebook and Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads, etc.  There will be a flurry of comments, and then they die down.  You've written a good book, but just one among many that readership enjoys.

Beyond just enjoying, and commenting, what can a reader do?

Well, in the old print-on-paper-snailmail days Star Trek invented the fanzine with fiction content.  Old Science Fiction fandom had lots of fanzines, many with commentary on current and older novels -- but it was essentially a non-fiction medium.

Star Trek, a TV Series, changed that.  The first Star Trek fanzine was published by Devra Langsam, who is still Trekking today.

From there, non-canon respecting Trekzines broke new ground, invented new categories, and even established the hetero-romance category,  I think this may be the first in that category

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

This Star Trek Romance series likewise inspired and welcomed writers other than the one who first crested it.

My own fanzine series, Kraith, had 50 creative contributors to its alternate-universe vision of Star Trek.

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

Star Trek inspired fans who created alternate universe Star Treks,  like Sahaj Collected, and Jean Lorrah's Night of the Twin Moons, which inspired and welcomed even more writers.

Classics have usually not done that before cheap offset printing and connected groups who hold conventions and sell each other fanzines.

Sherlock Holmes fandom picked up that cue and ran with it, and now we have a multitude of professionally published Holmes novels and spin-off TV Series, too.  It's a wonderful time we live in.

When I was researching for my Bantam paperback STAR TREK LIVES! about why fans like STAR TREK, before anyone but fans knew about Trekzines, I used my own first-published hardcover novel, HOUSE OF ZEOR, ...

 ...to illustrate the point about why people like Spock.

Simultaneously, fans were writing stories in my HOUSE OF ZEOR universe, dubbed the Sime~Gen Universe by Jean Lorrah (who became my collaborator and co-owner of Sime~Gen Inc.), and fanzines were proliferating.  As the internet just barely started to become the fanzine distribution medium, we moved online, and now you can find most of that early fanfic plus a lot of written-for-the-website fiction at

http://www.simegen.com/fandom/fandom.html

Meanwhile, Jean Lorrah sold a series of novels titled SAVAGE EMPIRE, and others have written in
that universe, including one Star Trek fan with his own series about Uhura, titled Captain Uhura.

https://www.amazon.com/Savage-Empire-Book-ebook/dp/B004NSVPO0/


And many years later, many of those early Sime~Gen fanfic writers had turned professional but were still thinking and creating Sime~Gen.  So the current publisher, Wildside Press, asked for an anthology of their stories set in the Sime~Gen Universe.  It is Volume 13

So, it seems to me the signature of a "Classic" is how it inspires other creative people to create, what they create inspires more people (who might not actually know the original source material) to create and capture the imaginations of yet another generation.

In other words, a Classic propagates.

In Part 5 of this series of posts, we noted the Classic Caine Riordan Novel, Marque of Caine,
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07TMN61Z9/
written by a writing student of mine, nominated for the Nebula Award in 2020.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/02/how-do-you-know-if-youve-written_25.html

The Caine Riordan series passes this "inspire readers to write" test by having inspired professional writers to create stories set in the Caine Riordan universe, carefully moderated by dedicated fans keeping all the details close to canon.

The first anthology by those writers is on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Signals-Charles-Gannon-ebook/dp/B07RHPYXF2/



So you know if you've written a classic by how your readers react -- often over decades as they grow up and become professional writers (in various fields).  If they create in your world, you experience a thrill of recognition you couldn't duplicate in any other way.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Sunday, May 31, 2020

You Think?

Cue the fanfare for the common creator of copyrighted works of music, art, and literature.
The Copyright Office has concluded that Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the Safe Harbor section) is unbalanced.

Over the last twenty years, the scales seem to have become weighted in favor of the tech giants OSPs, and in disfavor of rightsholders. It may come as no surprise that the biggest issues with Safe Harbor arise from a lack of clarity and legal agreement about what the criteria are for when an OSP has "red flag knowledge", and how many times and to what degree an infringer can infringe before he or she qualifies as a "repeat infringer".

This author has been complaining about those issues since 2005!

Legal bloggers Jason P. Bloom, Joseph Lawlor,  Lee F. Johnston,  and Wesley Lewis, representing the law firm Haynes and Boone LLP pen a very nice summary of the Copyright Office's 200 page report and major recommendations.

Original link:
https://www.haynesboone.com/alerts/copyright-office-finds-aspects-of-the-dmca-unbalanced

Lexology link:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=baab0441-e073-4c15-b736-44429fad801f

One can only hope that EBay and Twitter will take note. You think they will?

All the best,
Rowena Cherry 

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday  


PS. This gofundme link has nothing to do with copyright, or big tech. Sharing it anyway.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/demolished-small-business-in-minneapolis-riot


Thursday, May 28, 2020

Spooky Tutti Frutti

I'm delighted to announce the release of my lighthearted ghost story, "Spooky Tutti Frutti," from the Wild Rose Press.

Spooky Tutti Frutti

It's part of their summer reading e-book series, "One Scoop or Two." With ice cream as the unifying element, these stories range from 7500 words to novella length and had to include the following features: ice cream central to the plot; a setting in a waterfront tourist area during the summer; an ice cream flavor in the title. It can be fun to write a story in response to a highly specific call for submissions. At the bottom of my e-book's product page, you can see a row of other releases to date in the "One Scoop or Two" series and appreciate the clever titles other authors have come up with. My story takes place mostly in a 1950s-themed ice cream parlor, and I think the bright, perky cover captures the ambiance quite well.

I knew I wanted to contribute a ghost story, since all of my fiction is supernatural or paranormal in some way. Waterfront resort area? Annapolis, where I live, is one of the sailboat capitals of the East Coast. I got the editor's assurance that this location fits the criteria, even though it's on a river rather than an ocean beach. The idea of using a sailboat race as the basis for the heroine's problem came naturally, since boat races are a common summer event in this kind of locale. Preparing to set up a stall at the dockside celebration on race day, the heroine wants to create an original flavor. A friendly but slightly odd girl she hires as a temp comes up with the perfect flavor, but why is the new employee, although brilliant on the subject of ice cream, clueless about many details of everyday life?

I wanted my piece to be light and mildly humorous, so I gave the heroine a problem that's serious for her but not dire or life-threatening. Between the title and the strange girl's behavior, I assume the reader will guess soon enough that she's a ghost. I hope readers will have fun waiting for the heroine to figure out the truth and decide what to do about it.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Theme-Story Integration Part 6 - Crafting The Epiphany

Theme-Story Integration
Part 6
Crafting The Epiphany

Or put another way - The Story changes The Plot

Previous parts in this series are indexed at:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/05/index-to-theme-story-integration.html

In Part 5 we discussed a book about how to change anyone's mind, reviewed and summarized in the Wall Street Journal:

https://amazon.com/gp/product/B07THCZ626

The Wall Street Journal article
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-change-anyones-mind-11582301073
says:

--------quote---------
When trying to change minds, organizations or even the world, we often default to a particular approach: pushing. Boss not listening to that new idea? Send them another PowerPoint deck. Client isn’t buying the pitch? Remind them of all the benefits. When people are asked how they’ve tried to change someone’s mind, my own research finds that the overwhelming majority of the answers focus on some version of pushing.

The intuition behind this approach comes from physics. If you’re trying to move a chair, for example, pushing usually works. Push it in one direction and it tends to go that way. Unfortunately, people and organizations aren’t like chairs; they often push back. Instead, it helps to look to chemistry, where there’s a proven way to make change happen fast: Add a catalyst.

Catalysts convert air into fertilizer and petroleum into bike helmets. But most intriguing is the way they generate change. Instead of adding heat or pressure, they provide an alternate route, reducing the amount of energy required for reactions to occur. Rather than pushing, they remove barriers.

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

Of course, someone who has fallen in love with a person who doesn't "notice" them at all will want to change that person's mind.  They set out to seduce, woo, astonish, impress and get noticed.

And a corporate executive faced with a rival corporation -- or maybe a lawsuit, as in the TV Series, SUITS, -- will start their campaign with "pushing," and "push-back," and escalate the psychological violence to force the other to act in compliance with their own company's best interests.

Two countries at odds, each needing to change the other country's mind, will end up in war of some sort - Hot, Cold, Cyber.  The first and only recourse is FORCE.  Makes a great action movie or science fiction novel.

Science Fiction has been termed Action Adventure Genre. 

I don't believe that to be the case, which is why my Sime~Gen Series includes novels from all other Genres -- most all of them Love Stories, but including many Romances.

https://www.amazon.com/Sime-Gen-14-Book-Series/dp/B01N4SG08Q

Is 14 of them, but we are up to 15 volumes and counting.  Here is #15
https://www.amazon.com/Shift-Means-Sime-Gen-Springs-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B07YYRBRSM/

The first 8 Sime~Gen novels published were Action-Adventure with the Love Story or Romance hidden under the cover of Action because otherwise we would never have been able to sell them.

The world changed.  Science Fiction is now allowed to have Relationship Driven plots, and Science Fiction Romance became a recognized sub-genre.

Each of these novels, and most of my other novels,





including Those of My Blood, Dreamspy, Molt Brother, City of a Million Legends, and the Romantic Times Award Winning Dushau, Farfetch and Outreach all contain turning-point moments involving an epiphany of some sort.
Find them all at:
https://www.amazon.com/Jacqueline-Lichtenberg/e/B000APV900/



The epiphany makes you think something like:  Reality is not what I thought it was.

The epiphany moment is a Rising Action moment, a moment in the Story where the viewpoint Character changes his mind, and as a result changes the way the world appears.





A good, recent, example of needing to revise a theory is from Australia:
https://www.wired.com/story/australias-bushfires/ 

--------quote--------
Australia's Bushfires Completely Blasted Through the Models

The wildfires weren't just unprecedented—scientists didn't think such catastrophic conflagrations would happen until the end of this century. ------end quote----------

This change allows the consideration of courses of action which were hitherto literally unthinkable.



The epiphany moment is usually the exact middle of the novel (count the pages).  In a film script, it is the 2/3rds point or the 3/4 point.  It is the "worm turns" moment, the Aha! scene, or the "Oh, no, you don't!" scene.  It is the scene where, as the potential lover turns to mount the steps into a plane, the viewpoint Character runs up the stairs, too, not to be left behind.

At that moment, the inexorable plunge, the true adventure starts.

In some novels, this moment is in Chapter One -- the moment the main character realizes there actually are ghosts and she's haunted by the sexiest off them all, or the moment when the viewpoint character stumbles on a crashed UFO with a hand groping through a crack.

The epiphany moment is when the world changes.  Some novels have two or even three such moments as new information changes the main character's understanding of the situation.

Mystery genre is endlessly fascinating simply because the detective keeps discovering clues that "change everything."  Usually not an epiphany for a hardboiled detective, but can be one for the reader.

So most fiction we see today in films, TV Series, streaming or broadcast, and big box office are "action" in the sense that the two main characters or sides in the battle use "push" to overwhelm and dominate, to win, to make the other feel helpless, powerless, and compliant.

Bullies have discovered how to emasculate their victims, and Rapists use similar techniques of overwhelming power (comply or I'll fire you and your mother won't be covered by your health insurance for her cancer therapy).

HOW TO CHANGE ANYONE'S MIND suggests that figuring out why a person won't change their mind, then introducing a new factor, a catalyst, that alters that reason will cause a re-examination of the problem, and alteration of behavior.

Take away the barrier to changing the mind, and the mind will change itself.

This strategy has become a widely used advertising strategy, and is the way Politicians and Publicists worm their way into a population's general consensus.  It's gradual. It's progressive.  Or maybe insidious depending on your opinion of the direction of change being prompted.

"Why doesn't she love me?"

Figure that out.  Remove the reason.  She'll come to love you.

Do you want to change her enough to be willing to change yourself?  If you do "change yourself" for love, will it stick or will you come to feel you are an imposter living someone else's life and it's all her fault?

Consider religious conversion for the sole purpose of getting married in a particular tradition.  What a tangled web that weaves.

So, considering the weaponization of mind-changing others to suit your own idea, and the morals and ethics involved in that which generate thousands of wondrous Romance novel themes, consider the general state of humanity.

Your main Characters are both unique and representative of your target readership.  To create verisimilitude, you need that quirky dimension as well as the illusion of the Character being "the same as" the reader in some way.

That "the same as" dimension is termed the Objective Correlative -- someone to identify with, to understand on a non-verbal level, to resonate to.

The "unique" dimension is what makes the Character interesting.

So what can you use to find a "unique" element that would be stunning, original and memorable to your Readers?

To discover that element, look at studies of "humanity" -- just across the board, everybody.  Find out what everybody (in your readership) thinks is true of everyone else, and create a Character has that trait, and changes his mind, and thus the trait.

The moment when he changes his own mind because of new information is his epiphany.  For example, "I'll never get married," firm and absolute.  In walks a woman just hired to work in the office next door.  "Um. Maybe live-with?"  The mind begins to change because of new information.

THAT depicts a Hero, a man of Wisdom, the raw material of Good Husband, Trusty Father, and Worth The Bother.

According to a famous study, only some people are like that, able to reassess an opinion when contradictory information comes to light.

The study that you have to combine with THE CATALYST: HOW TO CHANGE ANYONE'S MIND has been dubbed the DUNNING-KRUGER EFFECT.

https://www.zmescience.com/science/the-dunning-kruger-effect-feature/

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

Dunning and Kruger used a similar methodology, asking hobbyists questions about gun safety and to estimate how well they performed on the quiz. Those who answered the fewest questions correctly also wildly overestimated their mastery of firearm knowledge.

It’s not specific only to technical skills but plagues all walks of human existence equally. One study found that 80% of drivers rate themselves as above average, which is literally impossible because that’s not how averages work. We tend to gauge our own relative popularity the same way.

It isn’t limited to people with low or nonexistent skills in a certain matter, either — it works on pretty much all of us. In their first study, Dunning and Kruger also found that students who scored in the top quartile (25%) routinely underestimated their own competence.

A fuller definition of the Dunning-Kruger effect would be that it represents a bias in estimating our own ability that stems from our limited perspective. When we have a poor or nonexistent grasp on a topic, we literally know too little of it to understand how little we know. Those who do possess the knowledge or skills, however, have a much better idea of where they sit. But they also think that if a task is clear and simple to them, it must be so for everyone else as well.

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

If you don't know what love is - you don't know that you don't know.

If you don't know what happiness is - you don't know that you don't know.

The same goes for "ever after."

People who are firmly convinced there can be no such thing as "Happily Ever After" have that stubborn, firmness of conviction spoken of in THE CATALYST.  They just aren't going to change their mind because they are experts who already really know.

Hey, likewise, we who are convinced there is a chance for HEA are just as expert in our ignorance of why there can't be any such thing.

Read that article on Dunning-Kroger Effect which explains it so clearly you will immediately recognize it in people you know, and then posts on Facebook.

If you subscribe online to the Wall Street Journal you can find the article, or it is/was available on Apple News:
 https://apple.news/AUCkYuFBqSLae5rU_F1OkOA

Or look up some reviews of the book THE CATALYST.

Most of both these articles contain nothing you don't already know.  As a writer, you've been a student of human nature all your life.  But it is possible you have never seen these simple observations of human behavior codified, and laid out in a way that it is clear the knowledge is being weaponized by the media to "control the population" -- peasants have to be controlled by their betters, right?

What do you know that nobody else knows?  What do they know that you don't?

What is the barrier in you that keeps you from changing your mind? You're already an expert?

What if what you know isn't actually so?

And ultimately, what would it take to change your mind?  What proof would you accept that you've been wrong all your life?

The Hero is the one who knows why he thinks what he thinks and thus readily re-thinks when evidence to the contrary appears.  Sometimes he arrives back at the same opinion, maybe by a different path, but the Hero is distinguished by the glee with which he re-thinks anything and everything he knows.

The Hero does not capriciously ditch his conclusions when someone contradicts or disapproves.  The Hero stipulates judiciously and develops new hypotheses, then runs tests to determine the best theory to try next.

The Hero has no barriers to changing his mind, so none of the strategies delineated in the book, THE CATALYST: HOW TO CHANGE ANYONE'S MIND, has any effect on his actions.

The Hero has a grasp of the overwhelming extent of his own ignorance, and sallies forth into life knowing he will take pratt falls and willing to laugh at himself.

Does your main Character want to marry a Hero?  Or does she need convincing?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Sunday, May 24, 2020

In Dispraise of Haste

Which "haste-related" cautionary proverb comes first to your mind?  I thought of "Marry in haste, repent at leisure," which was a socially relevant warning in Britain and Europe for several generations thrust together and torn apart by World War I and World War II.

In recent eras of living together, and relatively easy divorce, there probably less need for "repenting at leisure," so that proverb has lost its power.... which may be why it is ranked #30/35.

Source: Inspirational Stories.com proverbs on haste.
https://www.inspirationalstories.com/proverbs/t/on-haste/

Are proverbs still taught in schools? For that matter, are the different names for the males and females of animal species still taught? "Tiger / Tigress", maybe but it seems doubtful that "Cob / Pen / Cygnet" for swans, or "Hart / Hind" (of red deer) and "Buck / Doe" (of roe deer) are taught.

Animal names
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/doe

"Click-through in haste..." might be a modern day proverb.

The ever-interesting Mark Sableman, blogging for the law firm Thompson Coburn LLP, discusses online contracts (with a topical pun about contracting disease), and explains the different degrees of how inextricably to bind a visitor, or to be bound as a visitor, to a contract that --in their haste-- they have not read.

Original Link:
https://www.thompsoncoburn.com/insights/blogs/internet-law-twists-turns/post/2020-05-14/you-may-avoid-coronavirus-contacts-but-you-can-t-avoid-online-contracts#page=1

Lexology Link:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=6f1da6a7-56a4-4c18-8f3d-2c744f7b9a11

It reminds me a bit of a marital pre-nuptial contract!

Seriously, if you surf the internet a lot, or if you have your own website, or blog, you ought to read Mark Sableman's explanations of browse-wrap, click-wrap (or click-through), and sign-in wrap.

European readers of this blog should understand that the authors of this group blog do remind readers periodically that Blogspot will drop cookies on you, (it's browse-wrappy), and Google does post generic notices about the terms of use that you are inferred to agree with and to by sticking around.

Online contracts can be very secure, and safer than you would think, and they hold up well in court.  Thus, one should read an E-sign contract very carefully indeed, and not merely click merrily away to provide 7 (or however many) initials and 2 signatures in your choice out of 5 available fonts.

Legal blogger Tyler G, Newby, writing for Fenwick & West LLP, gives a fascinating historical overview of contracts, going back to the signet ring and hot sealing wax to the present day Docu-Sign (or its rivals such as Authentisign), and explains that such convenient services provide a time-and-date stamped audit trail  that may include the signer's IP address.

Of course, too, there is the clickwrap or click through and sign in protection for the professional who sends a link in an email to the expected signer.

For readers interested in how much copyright infringement has increased during the Covid-19 shut down, MUSO has a free, downloadable "white paper". It comes with click wrap, you have to give them your name and email address... but it might be interesting enough to be worth giving them the data, and possibly receiving follow up emails from MUSO.

https://www.muso.com/white-paper-demand-discovery?utm_campaign=COVID-19%20Protect%20&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=88156774&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-92B76dMP1rBc2xvht7vDqlzhChwXeYH-GGsTVaL3B6_aOiXEnexlgriwMhuv35_T2oUwbU8dyrNfvG9G1H767syhNUjQ&_hsmi=88156774

Talking of privacy, and marketing (which I do, often), Zarish S. Baig, blogging for Squire Patton Boggs, discusses the suspicions of some that third party marketers may listen in on private smart phone conversations.

https://tcpaworld.com/2020/05/13/googles-privacy-policy-cant-save-it-from-smartphone-spying-claim-california-privacy-laws-tested-in-suit-alleging-big-tech-is-letting-subcontractors-listen-in-on-your-conversations/#page=1

It would appear, the above average internet user is also expected to read any ISP's Privacy Policy, especially if they purchase and use a device capable of recording anything.

Apropos hastiness and insecurity, if Zooming, or Facetiming, or otherwise broadcasting a live video of yourself, bear in mind that more of your background than you might expect might be exposed.  We've all seen the accidentally-on-purpose naked roomies caught over the shoulders of vloggers; the over casual anchor without his trousers who spread his legs a little wide under his desk, and his bare thigh crept into view; and then there is the prince who did not realize that he had official secrets on an open file in his background.

Derek M. Stikeleather, for Goddell DeVries Leech and Dann LLP shares Kim Kardashian's tips for looking fabulous while teleconferencing, and much more.

https://www.gdldlaw.com/blog/what-kim-kardashian-and-prince-william-can-teach-us-about-remote-oral-arguments

All the best,
Rowena Cherry 

Thursday, May 21, 2020

Series Binge Reading

The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION carries a regular column called "Plumage from Pegasus," by Paul Di Filippo, satirizing aspects of the writing life and the publishing industry. The article in the May-June 2020 issue, "Faster, Publisher! Binge! Binge!", imagines a near future in which the federal government has "outlawed serial fiction in all media, in response to its obvious debilitating effects." One exception, the trilogy (a "one tolkien" unit) is still legal, but that can't make a dent in the addictive cravings of the narrator, a self-confessed hopeless "codex-head." Piers Anthony's Xanth series lasts him only three weeks. He takes longer to get through the nearly 100 Perry Mason mysteries, but they don't last forever, nor do Enid Blyton's approximately 700 books. In desperation, he subjects himself to the ultimate hardcore aversion therapy regimen—reading the entire Perry Rhodan franchise in the original German.

All dedicated bookaholics probably identify with the thrill of discovering a new favorite author who has dozens or scores of books to read through. Some series can be read in any order, while others don't make sense that way. When I first got into the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, I didn't realize that, while many of the novels can be picked up at any point, the ones featuring Harriet Vane have a definite story arc. I read BUSMAN'S HONEYMOON (which begins with the marriage of Peter and Harriet) before the earlier books in the arc and was bewildered for the first chapter or so, because I had no idea who Harriet was. I read many of J. D. Robb's Eve Dallas futuristic mysteries out of order (until I caught up and began buying them upon release), which works for most of the books, although one gets more out of them by following the recurring characters from one story to the next. However, the first three novels, in which Eve meets and marries Roarke, really do need to be read first for optimal appreciation and just to avoid confusion. Fans of the Narnia novels disagree on whether they should be approached in internal chronological order or original publication order. Encountering Narnia for the first time in THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE offers an experience of discovery that's lost if one starts with the chronologically earlier THE MAGICIAN'S NEPHEW. Although the systematic side of my mind favors chronological order, I have to agree that for a first reading, publication order works best. In subsequent readings, I would start with THE MAGICIAN'S NEPHEW and insert THE HORSE AND HIS BOY in its proper place right after THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE.

The aforementioned Perry Mason books, from what I know of them, seem to stand alone in any order. So do the books in Agatha Christie's voluminous mystery canon, except that I'd advise postponing the final adventures of, respectively, Tommy and Tuppence, Hercule Poirot, and Miss Marple until you've become acquainted with those detective characters in a few earlier novels. After Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "A Study in Scarlet," which introduces Holmes and Watson, you can enjoy the Sherlock Holmes mysteries in any order, aside from the tales dealing with his "death" and return. As far as I can tell from memories of reading a few of the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books, those series can be dipped into at random, being written by ghostwriters under house pseudonyms and lacking any story arcs or character growth. On the other hand, the far better and undeservedly obscure Judy Bolton mysteries, by Margaret Sutton (a real person, who based the settings on the area in Pennsylvania where she lived), has characters who age from one installment to the next, graduate from school, and get married.

I recently decided to reread C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower series. Discovering we didn't own all the novels, I ordered the missing volumes in secondhand copies. Then I had to wait for some of the gaps to be filled, because I want to read the books in internal chronological order. Like the Narnia series, however, they weren't published that way. The original Hornblower trilogy is set at the peak of his career, when he's captain of a ship of the line. The author later filled in the hero's life story with numerous prequels and sequels.

And then there's the frustration of discovering a publisher has allowed some earlier books in a series to go out of print. Thank goodness we now have easy access to out-of-print materials on the internet. How do you approach rereading a series? Do you follow it from start to finish or pick out favorite stories to savor?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Saturday, May 16, 2020

Outsiders and Outliers

I'll be brief. Thanks to Les Stroud, aka Survivorman, (who --many years ago-- was gracious enough to write the cover quote for my alien-survival-romance Insufficient Mating Material), I discovered research "gold" today on YouTube.

Here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpJcBozuF6A

Les Stroud, aka Survivorman, shows a wide variety of survival scenes in popular movies and points out what they did right, and what they got wrong. His insights are remarkable.

Seduced by the sidebar, intellectually speaking, I then "discovered" the fascinating Jonna Mendez, a CIA mistress of disguise, who walks viewers through a variety of action/spy movie clips, with commentary. Apparently, Tom Cruise got one of his Impossible Missions badly wrong, no matter how wonderful he looked in a long black dress. There are three professions that the secret services will never use as a disguise, and Jonna Mendez explains.

Here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpJcBozuF6A

Former FBI agent Jim Clemente discusses how the FBI detects lying and deception. Topical, that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpJcBozuF6A

Apparently, most liars are caught because they don't lie with enough detail. Jim Clemente asks the sort of question that every would be author plotting a well-developed hero (or any other character) ought to ask and commit to note cards.

When nosing out the truth, a good agent cannot rely on myths, and short cuts. Just because I cover my mouth with my hand does not mean that I am a liar.... I might have bad teeth! (He did not say that.)

Another former FBI spy catcher and body language expert, Joe Navarro, explains how to read body language.

Here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jwUXV4QaTw

As Romance authors, we know about the different stages of touching, from the first brush or shake of the hero's and heroine's hand. Joe Navarro explains how and why touching is important.... and if we are all doomed to never shake hands with a stranger again post Covid-19, at least we will know why we are missing what we are missing.

Finally, a real expert archer, Cameron Hanes, critiqued a selection of bow scenes, and gave particular props to  Legolas actor Orlando Bloom for his technique. Skip to frame 17.25, if extensive footage of bare chested John Rambo with bow and arrow is not your cup of tea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdipblQmgnw

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

Thursday, May 14, 2020

Mating Season

I enjoy watching the various "Planet Earth" series narrated by David Attenborough on the BBC America channel; I've seen bits of some of the episodes multiple times. A vital aspect of life on Earth, especially animal life, is, of course, producing the next generation. Mating and the care of offspring occupy a lot of footage on those programs. A constant viewer soon notices that most animals other than primates have fixed breeding seasons at particular set times. Once a year, for however long the process takes, all members of a given species enter the mating period. They all focus their total attention and energy on finding partners and producing offspring. For the rest of the year, they return to whatever constitutes "normal life" for their species, perhaps now with young to care for. It's striking to watch films of thousands of penguins or seals, for instance, crowding onto beaches for their annual mating rites. Some of them, such as penguins, practice lifelong monogamy, yet they engage in sexual activity only during that brief period.

Suppose a sapient species had a similar pattern, everybody in their society becoming fertile at once, all of them compelled to mate within a period of a few weeks or miss their chances to become parents? Wouldn't the entire society essentially shut down for that period, sort of like an extended Mardi Gras but with no sober police force or other authorities to keep the madness under control? The hermaphroditic humanoids in Ursula Le Guin's LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS go into "heat" for a few days every month, but they don't all enter that condition at the same time. How would an entire alien culture subject to an annual, universal breeding season handle it? Maybe people become infertile after a certain age, and the elders in their society have the responsibility to keep civilization running smoothly until citizens of reproductive age get back to normal. Would civilization as we know it have taken longer to evolve on that planet, with the yearly mating frenzy as a distraction?

In the opposite situation, some species have only one breeder or breeding couple in a group (e. g., bees, naked mole rats, wolves). An alien society with that reproductive pattern would presumably display none of the preoccupation with sexuality that drives so much of human law, custom, and emotional life.

Wildlife documentaries offer a wealth of information about exotic (to us) biological traits that could inspire alien species.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Theme-Story Integration Part 5 - How To Change Anyone's Mind

Theme-Story Integration
Part 5
How To Change Anyone's Mind

Previous parts in the Theme-Story Integration Series:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/04/theme-story-integration-part-1-villain.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/04/theme-story-integration-part-2-villain.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/04/theme-story-integration-part-3-sexy.html

Part 4 - Rag-Tag-Band Ensemble Story
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/05/theme-story-integration-part-4-rag-tag.html

To sell Hollywood a script, you have to master Character Arc -- how much change can a human exhibit under the impact of how small a prompting, and after how short an interval of "processing" the new information.

Humans are elastic, to be sure, but have limits.

To sell science fiction, you have to depict scientifically plausible rates of change (and some of the scientists reading your science fiction are psychiatrists, sociologists, specialists in human behavior).

To sell Romance, you have to depict humanly plausible reasons for initial "attraction" (or "repulsion.")  You have to show-don't-tell what she sees in him, and what he sees in her.

Here is What Does She See In Him?

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

The ability to "see" something in another person develops in the Teens, usually through those endless conversations parents have little patience with.  Seeing your own world through the eyes of another is a major breakthrough in maturation.

That is your starting point, when you realize that you understand where someone else is making a mistake.  "Don't date that guy. He's a loser."  And you try to change the other person's mind, change what they see -- usually, in the teen years, you try to change the other person's opinion without changing how they see, just what they see.

The assumption is that what you see is better, or more correct, than what the other person sees.

How do you change another person?

Many marriages start with the Neptune-fantasy induced idea that you can change the other person, rescue them from themselves, get them off drugs or whatever they are addicted to, alter their behavior.

It does work sometimes, but usually not for the reasons the marriage happened in the first place.  Most often such marriages end in divorce, which gives Romance writers the chance to explore the Second Time Around - where wisdom over-rides the urge to change another.

What you can do is change yourself to match the other person.

Find that a cringe-worthy idea?  Yeah, so do they!

But the truth is people change.  If people are too immature when they marry, and change-rates haven't settled down, they might grow toward each other, or might grow apart,  Apart usually leads to divorce.

Minds can be changed -- that is, the conclusions a person reaches can be questioned and discarded.  But how they reach those conclusions usually doesn't change after a certain level of maturity (reached at different ages).

The young/old couple pairing often gels nicely because the older person functions in a reliable manner, which relieves uncertainty, and stress for the younger who is still hunting for a thinking method.

We live in a world of professional (and well paid and well funded) mind-changers.

Profit seekers have weaponized psychological tricks for changing minds.

Can you get someone to love that which they currently hate?

Maybe.  Some people study this process for a living.

It is based on the assumption that what you are leading them to accept is better than what they currently accept.

Here is a 2019 non-fiction book detailing the results of many years of such well funded studies.

The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone's Mind Kindle Edition by Jonah Berg


https://www.amazon.com/Catalyst-How-Change-Anyones-Mind-ebook/dp/B07THCZ626/

Use these techniques, combined in different ways, and you can convince most readers that your Character is a real human being (or an Alien with enough in common with humans to make an excellent mate).

Today, people are accustomed to being targeted by these mind-altering weapons, and many ordinary people use them routinely.

Using this book as a checklist for making sure your Character doesn't arc to quickly, or too easily, or too slowly, to be believed will add verisimilitude to your Romance.

Now comes the thematic question of whether the user of these techniques is pristinely ethical -- or the blackest villain.

Who should be in charge of what others believe?  Teachers?  Children?  Authorities?

In Part 4 we looked STARS BEYOND...
https://amazon.com/Stars-Beyond-Uncharted-Book-ebook/dp/B07N5QJJFG/

...with an ensemble cast striving to survive in a world built on Genetic Modification for health and/or fun/art.  The Characters didn't arc - but their world did.

There was no thematic discussion (in show don't tell) of the issue of modifying another person on a basic level.  None of the conflicts involved who gets to say what you look like.  It was just, smoothly, assumed that in every case, the one being changed was totally in control of the outcome of their changes.

The one (intriguing) exception was when the Aliens saved a human's life by changing the eyes to a different visual spectrum, and incidentally and conveniently for them, changed linguistic center of the brain. Other humans, without objection, underwent the linguistic center modification.

Huge opportunities for conflict and resolution - for Character Arc and many other thematic discussions were overlooked, and I think it's because this gigantic story was compressed into one slender volume.

Here is the Theme-Character series, a jumping off place for constructing a Story Arc.
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/index-to-theme-character-integration.html

Read STARS BEYOND and keep in mind the potential for applying the principles of "The Catalyst" to produce a long series of long novels which are all pure Romance.  Love Conquers All, but this novel is set after all the conquering so there is very little real conflict.  I think that's because they (the collaborators) started the story too late in the thematic arc.

Is it our genes that need modifying, or is it our minds?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com