Never Content

Two advertisements being played all too frequently on cable tv this season drive me into Bah Humbug mode.

One of them burbles about "the content we produce".

"The content we produce..." said no one who ever wrote a book, a recipe, a song, or painted a work of art, or wrote a thesis or a government bill (of the white paper kind), or even a legal brief.  When someone asks, "What are you working on?" at an authors group social, no one says, "Content!"

To this seething listener, even that which an advertisement writer writes is not "content". The proper name for what they write is "advertising copy", and for a really well-written explanation of what makes for good advertising copy, read what Studious Guy has to say about it.

https://studiousguy.com/advertising-copy-definition-types-examples/

Just to take up their collective "we" for a moment, if people who write adverts wrote "content", they would not have to pay for airtime. There are exceptions: the advertisements created for play during a particularly super, all-male sporting championship involving a so-called pigskin. 

By the way, according to Karyn Moyer of AgBlogs, "pigskin" is a polite euphemism for bladder.

https://blog.aghires.com/footballs-were-never-made-of-pig-skin/

In that case, those advertisements become news and entertainment, and are exploited by others for fun and profit.

"Content' is a created meaning of an old word, popularized since the advent of the internet by predators who exploit the work and works of others. 

 

"Content", depending on where you put the stress, is an adverb or verb for oppressed comfort with the status quo, or acceptance of ones lot, or is a noun.  

Examples in no particular order:

"I am content with my marriage/ the comfortable drudgery of my life/ the limitations that others impose on me"; 

"I content myself with the thought that I could not do better."  

Or,  "...it is the content of one's character, by which one should be judged adequate or wanting." 

 

And then, there is its derivative, "Contentment" (noun), "contented" (adjective).

 

The slop inside a tin/can of processed food is called contents (plural).  Not content (singular).

Other offerings from a dictionary or three:

Satisfy someone

Peaceful happiness (even an easy feeling)

State of satisfaction

Something contained

Acceptance  or assent

On the internet… something "available for download or reading by internet user."

With the exception of a game in which men play with bladders and their like, .... well, I take that back. One can probably find any advertisement on You Tube.

Legal blogger Brian Murphy who writes for Frankfurt Kurnit Klein and Selz PC's fascinating Advertising Law blog, wrote recently about a dispute over content ownership in the case of Miller vs the French Pastry School LLC.

Before your eyes glaze over (pastry pun!!!), authors who seek out a web mistress or web master can extrapolate a valuable lesson.

The business model of The Butterbook  https://www.thebutterbook.com/home-old  is that subscribers pay just under two hundred dollars a year for access to recipes and baking how-to videos.

They hired Miller in 2016 to "develop content" for their website. Ms. Miller spent two contented years creating indexes and the sorts of matter that web content producers assemble and put into attractive form for websites. She was paid, but they never wrote up a written agreement of who owned whatever might be considered copyrightable.

When Miller and Butterbook fell out, Butterbook demanded all product and an assignment of all rights.  Miller countered with her own offer, and registered copyrights of her work.

Original link:

https://advertisinglaw.fkks.com/post/102hdsd/like-buttah-a-copyright-dispute-over-ownership-of-contributions-to-a-high-end-b

 

Lexology link: 

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=3f1b58f9-cbc0-4dbd-ab47-573d7f397504

For authors who hire website designers, or even who ask a friend to help them, there are differences between an exclusive license and a non-exclusive license. Some working arrangements might create an implied license, or even joint authorship questions.  Sort it out in writing while you both want to work with one another.

 A question about what is an implied license is currently bubbling with Instagram's new terms of service regarding embedded "content". If the person who uploads a photograph or text does not turn off  the public button, are they thus by their omission giving away their right (or anyone else's right) to claim copyright infringment?  More on that another time.

As for that second advertisement, one of the motor manufacturers appears to be touting the lethal potential of their car as a selling point. It's the ad copy writer's fault, of course.

Oh, well.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

Space Snark

 

 

 

Karen S. Wiesner: HOW TO SPOT DEAD OR LIFELESS CHARACTERS, PLOTS, AND RELATIONSHIPS (CPR), Part 3 (Writer's Craft Article)

Writer's Craft Article by Karen S. Wiesner

HOW TO SPOT DEAD OR LIFELESS CHARACTERS, PLOTS, AND RELATIONSHIPS (CPR), Part 3

Based on CPR FOR DEAD OR LIFELESS FICTION {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships} by Karen S. Wiesner

This is the final of three posts focusing on how to spot dead or lifeless characters, plots, and relationships in your fiction

A lack of development and progress in character, plot, and relationship is something that can be seen throughout an entire book and sometimes the whole of a series. James Scott Bell advises asking yourself, "Who cares?" and "What's the purpose?" to ensure validity and clarification of the reason for each scene even existing. I'd add for clarification that characters, plots, and relationships all need to have a reason for existing. If readers are never engaged on even one count of core elements, what's the purpose of the book existing and, honestly, who cares if it gets read? If there isn't passion burning inside all three of the core elements, bursting out so the story has to be told, there is quite literally no point to starting, continuing or finishing. For anyone.

Development of all three elements is crucial and progression has to be evident from one scene to the next. If something is actually happening in a story with all three of the CPR elements, the reader will want to stick around to find out more--to find out everything, with a sense of avid anticipation and participation rather than frustration and disengagement, uncertainty, and dissatisfaction.

Off the top of my head, I can think of two current bestselling authors writing series focused on main characters in white collar fields. In both series, the stories are plot-leaden (as opposed to merely heavy). These authors are known for action-packed stories, and they deserve kudos for providing that every single time. However, in both cases, the series are almost completely character and relationship-development deficient. In either, beyond what the main character does for a living--with above-average intelligence--we learn almost nothing about him personally, about his current life beyond his work and the story quest, about his past and his future drive. All his internal conflicts and goals and motivations are plot-focused to the point where his own private needs and desires are rarely if ever considered or attended to. Relationships never feel well-grounded. They happen in the present--and they merely happen. We're given only sparse glimpses about what occurred between characters in the past and those glimpses are cold without strong, emotional connections, memories, or developments. Readers don't feel any encouragement about future developments with those relationships either. Personal attachments--temporary or otherwise--serve the plot. Period.

The sheer evidence of the insufficiency of character and relationship development lives in how neither author includes enough "downtimes" (a point in which the main character takes a rest from the action to reflect) within the extreme action sequences of the individual stories. The main character in both series is almost constantly running from or toward something. He doesn't sit down and ruminate on his life, let alone take that time to cultivate strong connections and emotional attachments with the people running around with him. As a result, the consequences are muted, lacking both tension and intrigue, and certain exhaustion (also for the reader?) may be the only end-game in sight.

Whenever I read these series which are admittedly enjoyable (though ultimately disappointing because of all the reasons I mentioned above), I'm forced to imagine the author holding a doll of his very popular series character and slam-driving that poor, defenseless thing through one breath-stealing action sequence after the other without a single break in the arduous trek each book goes through. Nothing personal breaks up these ruthless tasks the character is given back-to-back in every story.

But, not only are the creators forcing the characters through the motions, the authors aren't going beyond those motions themselves--and that's the biggest travesty of un-/underdevelopment of core elements. In both cases, the main character isn't dead but he's almost certainly lifeless. Unfortunately for demanding readers who want three-dimensional core elements, the intrigue here is with plots (and--in a stretch--settings, which is a component of character development) almost exclusively. I consider these particular characters little more than zombies. Yes, there is a semblance of life. The POV character is actually moving around, going through the motions, but he isn't actively living, breathing, or functioning beyond basic instinct in direct response to the plot, which he serves. With a little more effort, these authors could actually breathe life into all CPR elements of these series stories and make them wonderful and memorable beyond the exciting plots.

Fix this axiom in your mind: Character reveals plot and relationships, just as plot and relationships reveal character, and relationships reveal character and plot. This trinity is vital to the cohesiveness of your stories. They work together to unearth, connect, and layer a story. The strongest stories are the ones in which every part of the story--the characters’ role, physical descriptions, personalities, strengths and weaknesses, relationships, skills, conflicts, goals and motivation, and even settings--becomes cohesive and fits together organically. We’ve all read books in which the key aspects didn't quite merge naturally. Maybe we didn’t notice a specific issue, but we knew something was off, lacked logic, or didn’t quite fit with the rest of the story, and the imbalance frustrated us. There’s a chance you never finished reading those books. The ones that you absolutely cannot put down and that stay with you every minute of the time you’re reading them and for years afterward are the ones in which every aspect is so intricately connected that separating the threads of CPR development is difficult, even impossible.

While it should be easy to spot dead or lifeless conditions in our characters, plots and relationships, it's nowhere as simple as author would like it to be. In this three-part article, we've gone over some of the telltale scenarios that may reveal if any aspect of your CPR development is outright dead or simply lifeless, in whole or in part with the "alive" part potentially carting around the "lifeless" or "dead" elements. So often these scenarios are utilized as if they're legitimate methods in so-called CPR development--and they can't and shouldn't be. The scenarios in this article should help you pinpoint if any of your core elements are dead or lifeless.

Have you ever read a book with dead or lifeless relationships? Leave a comment to tell me about it!

Happy writing!

Find out more about CPR FOR DEAD OR LIFELESS FICTION here: http://www.writers-exchange.com/cpr/

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08JDYXMFQ

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 140 titles and 16 series. Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

https://www.goodreads.com/karenwiesner

http://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/ 

http://www.writers-exchange.com/blog/

https://www.amazon.com/author/karenwiesner

Anti-Santas

You've probably heard of Krampus, the horned, hairy, bipedal monster from Austrian legend who prowls in December, mainly on Saint Nicholas Day (December 6), and stuffs misbehaving children into his sack to drag them to Hell:

The Krampus Legend

He even has his own website (which appears not to have been updated recently, since the calendar of festive events refers to 2015):

Krampus.com

The Jungian shadow of Santa Claus has other traditional representatives, however. While we joke about naughty children getting coal from Santa instead of presents, those scary Yuletide figures often take over the punishment task, allowing Santa to remain the good guy. Belsnickel, a fur-clad sidekick of Santa in Germany and among German immigrants in Pennsylvania, does play a dual role. He carries both switches to beat bad children and candy for good children. Similarly, another Christmas companion from Germany, Knecht Ruprecht, gives treats to good children but switches and coal to bad ones. He may also beat the naughty kids with the bag of ashes he carries. In the Netherlands, Zwarte Piet (Black Pete, referring mainly to his sooty appearance) whips bad children with a birch rod or carries them off in his sack. Joulupukki, the Yule Goat of Finland, is sometimes portrayed as an ugly creature who frightens children.

In THE BATTLE FOR CHRISTMAS, an entertaining, in-depth exploration of how the true old-fashioned Christmas (which would look to us like a blend of Thanksgiving, Halloween, and New Year's Eve) was converted in the nineteenth century to the child-centered family holiday we know, author Stephen Nissenbaum analyzes the origins and purpose of Clement Clarke Moore's "A Visit from Saint Nicholas" (aka "The Night Before Christmas"). Nissenbaum draws striking line-by-line parallels between Moore's poem and "The Day of Doom," written by a Massachusetts clergyman in the seventeenth century and still popular in the early nineteenth. The major difference between the two works is that the poem about Saint Nicholas includes no threats of "doom" or "judgment." The "jolly old elf" offers only gifts and good cheer, no coal or switches for naughty children. Christmas was being domesticated.

Traditions of anti-Santas bring to mind THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, the movie in which Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King, fascinated by the idea of Christmas but not fully understanding it, tries to appropriate the holiday because he thinks it should be more like Halloween. Likewise, in Terry Pratchett's fantasy novel HOGFATHER, when the existence of the Hogfather (the Discworld equivalent of Santa Claus) is threatened, Death steps up to save Hogswatchnight by temporarily filling the role of his fellow anthropomorphic personification. Not surprisingly, Death handles the job in rather eccentric ways. I especially like the conclusion of the novel, in which the Hogfather reverts to his primal persona as a nature deity in animal form, and only saving his life can ensure that the sun will rise at the winter solstice.

At the end of that climactic scene, Death insists that if the Hogfather had not been saved, the sun would not have risen. Susan, Death's granddaughter, asks what would have happened instead. In his customary all-caps dialogue, Death replies, "A MERE BALL OF FLAMING GAS WOULD HAVE ILLUMINATED THE WORLD."

Happy winter holiday season to all!

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

When is a Bottom Synonymous With Beauty?

Here's a scientific riddle.

Q: "When is a Bottom synonymous with Beauty?"

A: "When it's a quark."

I was thoroughly enjoying Mark Zastrow's piece on astrology.com about a newly discovered giant exoplanet  and why it is called b.Centauri b. when I was diverted in both senses of the word by his mention of a Very Large Telescope.

https://astronomy.com/news/2021/12/a-planet-with-the-biggest-host-stars-known

Rejoicing in the glorious, understated imagination of astronomers when it comes to descriptive language, particularly with regard to the "Large", I nipped off to check on the  Large Hadron Collider, and came across the gem of  that a "bottom quark" is another name for a "beauty quark".

Moreover, a bottom quark (or beauty quark) can be unpredictable. It has been known to behave badly!

https://royalsociety.org/science-events-and-lectures/2021/07/beauty-quarks-behaving-badly/

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2272400-has-the-large-hadron-collider-finally-challenged-the-laws-of-physics/ 

For those of us with less astral interests, we're still thinking about well-shaped, even large, buttocks, which leads to the copyright-law related topic --naturally-- of product placement.

Legal blogger Jack Greiner --of Graydon Head & Ritchey LLP, on his highly acclaimed, award-winning Jack Out Of The Box blog-- discusses Awkward Product Placement. To wit, putting actor Chris Noth's butt on a Peloton without permission....and then killing him off (fictionally).

https://graydon.law/awkward-product-placement/

Great minds from Baker Hostetler LLP also found the story apparently irresistible. Amy Ralph Mudge's views on publicity, and when it is better to build on a sensational story rather than to sue, are great.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=3bec237f-04bc-44aa-8078-68a5ac88c4e6

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=3bec237f-04bc-44aa-8078-68a5ac88c4e6&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+General+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2021-12-16&utm_term=

Disclaimer, lest something thinks I am pumping it: I bought Peloton (PTON) stock on Friday...pretty much close to the bottom of the day.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

 

 

Karen S. Wiesner: HOW TO SPOT DEAD OR LIFELESS CHARACTERS, PLOTS, AND RELATIONSHIPS (CPR), Part 2 (Writer's Craft Article)

Writer's Craft Article by Karen S. Wiesner

HOW TO SPOT DEAD OR LIFELESS CHARACTERS, PLOTS, AND RELATIONSHIPS (CPR), Part 2

Based on CPR FOR DEAD OR LIFELESS FICTION {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships} by Karen S. Wiesner

This is the second of three posts focusing on how to spot dead or lifeless characters, plots, and relationships in your fiction

 It should be simple to spot dead or lifeless CPR conditions in our characters, plots, and relationships, I know, but it's unfortunately anything but. I feel your pain in identifying dead or lifeless CPR elements because it's a question that been with me from the very first book I wrote. With the need to identify dead or lifeless CPR development in mind, let's go over some general ways that should pinpoint whether any aspect is dead or merely lifeless. In the chapters that follow, identification will allow us to give the lacking areas either the kiss of life or a jolt of electricity. 

Poking and prodding your characters, plots, and relationships in all the compass points with sketches should exhibit some reaction one way or the other. When you start asking questions about all of these things, getting absolutely no response--beyond a blank, cadaverous stare--is clear enough. Yup, dead. Time of death? The moment of execution. (Forgive the really bad pun.)

Merely lifeless core elements, however, may show a few signs of life and that's what makes lethargy in development so hard to spot. As we said earlier, conceivably, some evidence of development can allow those areas that are at least functional to carry around the dead elements. In these cases where the book is already published and the functional elements are hoisting the dead ones in a sack over the shoulder, readers may even overlook your failure because the solid development of those one or two core elements gives the reader part of what he's seeking.

The identification of partial necrosis is almost always deeply startling to readers. There are times when I'm reading a story I'm enjoying but not in an in overwhelmed, obsessive way that I'll suddenly visualize the author's hand holding the character as if she's a puppet or a dead body, forcing a certain situation on the poor thing. That hand will move the character around in response to action, even thrusting another story puppet/dead body up against her in a contrived effort to make something happen between the two that's equally artificial, awkward, and not a little disturbing.

One aspect or another in a story like this is undeveloped or underdeveloped and, in the course of reading, I'll usually, eventually, figure out what's lacking. Maybe the main or secondary characters have no obvious signs of life, nothing that makes them unique, no legitimate personality, personal goals or motivations. A main character's conflicts as they're portrayed may not convince me she truly cares about them, has an intensely personal investment in them, or that they're cohesive with what's been set up as who this person is and what's she's all about in other aspects.

Whether the conflicts are internal or external, the story may not feel like it's actually hers. Events are randomly happening to her, and there's no personal connection to them. She's not authentically motivated to act in the face of what's happening to her. It may be easier for her to run away--and that goal at least may feel legit. When she's compelled to react, jerky clunkiness may be the result, more robotic than flesh and blood.

Also, her relationships might not seem quite realistic and deeply planted, growing enough to feel warm and realistic. Maybe she's going through the motions with these people who are part of her life, but even those most intimate ones don't go in-depth enough to spark emotion in me, as the reader. In the worst case scenario, I've read romance stories where relationships are integral to the genre yet those attachments had little or no depth, dimension, desire, or connection between two people who were supposed to be falling in love and making romantic, reading hearts swoon. If a romance story doesn't include strong, profoundly emotional relationships, it's failed on the most elementary level.

I've also read books and even series--some of them that were actually published--where the author has deigned to give a main character a first name, neglected the last, and sometimes doesn't bother with physical descriptions or details about the past nor "drive" for the future that would fully flesh out the character. Plots and conflicts (and the corresponding, crucial goals and motivations) are almost always spur of the moment, created scene by scene, no setup, no buildup, no curiosity, and certainly no tension. The relationships feel cold, stilted, off-focus, frequently with secondary characters that serve no other purpose in the story beyond being soundboards for the main character or, worse, merely bulking up the word count. Even if a minor effort has been made to plant foundational seeds of character, plot, and relationship, so often those seeds aren't developed and advanced properly or at all throughout the subsequent scenes in the book. They're buried so deep, it's not possible for them to come out to see the light of day and flourish.

In Part 3, we'll talk more about how to spot dead or lifeless CPR development.

Have you ever read a book with dead or lifeless plots? Leave a comment to tell me about it!

Happy writing!

Find out more about CPR FOR DEAD OR LIFELESS FICTION here: http://www.writers-exchange.com/cpr/

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08JDYXMFQ

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 140 titles and 16 series. Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

https://www.goodreads.com/karenwiesner

http://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/ 

http://www.writers-exchange.com/blog/ 

https://www.amazon.com/author/karenwiesner

Classics and Monsters

Following the success of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES (2009), numerous mash-ups of public domain classic novels with horror creatures and tropes were published in the few years immediately following. I've recently reread LITTLE VAMPIRE WOMEN and A VAMPIRE CHRISTMAS CAROL. Are such adaptations worth reading except as bizarre novelties? Their main appeal, judging from the types of books that have been adapted, seems to be incongruity, with fiction as unlike the horror genre as possible being transmuted by the insertion of supernatural threats into the original stories. Some others, for example, are JANE SLAYRE, SENSE AND SENSIBILITY AND SEA MONSTERS, LITTLE WOMEN AND WEREWOLVES, and WUTHERING BITES.

In my opinion, those kinds of books turn out better if they involve a certain amount of actual rewriting. From what I remember of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES, it's fun to read once but not transformative enough to comprise much more than Jane Austen's original work with zombies thrown in at suitable intervals. Granted, though, the image of Elizabeth as a trained zombie-slayer has a certain zany charm. LITTLE VAMPIRE WOMEN and A VAMPIRE CHRISTMAS CAROL, on the other hand, rewrite their prototypes more extensively, although some undigested lumps of Alcott's and Dickens's prose do stand out.

A VAMPIRE CHRISTMAS CAROL raises the question of whether the entertainment value of such crossovers fades a bit when the source text already contains elements of supernatural horror. It strikes me as not too much of a stretch to have Mr. Scrooge stalked by vampires as well as haunted by ghosts. WUTHERING BITES falls into a similar category. Vampiric motifs pervade WUTHERING HEIGHTS, with Heathcliff explicitly compared to a vampire in one line. Turning him into a literal vampire-human crossbreed, cursed by the heritage of his monstrous half, fits fairly well into the original plot. In that case, the "co-author" can't depend solely on the appeal of incongruity; she has to create a believable story with an anti-hero who inspires genuine sympathy as well as horror.

A step removed from those books, which might be considered a peculiar sort of fanfic, we find "secret histories" such as ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER, which I discovered to be better than I'd expected. The criterion for such novels is that the action must remain faithful to the historical person's biography as publicly known, while inserting supernatural elements into the hidden corners of his or her life, so to speak. Queen Elizabeth, H. P. Lovecraft, Lizzie Borden, and many others have received similar fictional treatment. A January 2022 release, THE SILVER BULLETS OF ANNIE OAKLEY, by Mercedes Lackey, will introduce magic into the career of the famed sharpshooter. I don't object to this type of fiction as long as the author does conscientious research into the historical background and treats the protagonist with respect.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt