Showing posts with label Happily Ever After. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Happily Ever After. Show all posts

Thursday, September 28, 2023

In Celebration of Happy Endings

In fiction, is a sad conclusion more "realistic" than a happy one? "The belief seems to be that tragic or unhappy endings are 'real' and therefore 'worthy' while happy endings are an easy cop-out." This essay on the Word Wenches blog strongly objects to that belief:

Word Wenches: Happy Endings

The insistence that happy endings are unrealistic seems based on the undeniable fact that the real world contains lots of horror and suffering. Yes, admits this blogger, but it also contains "a lot of happy stuff," which she wants us to "celebrate. . . not push it under the carpet and call it mindless fluff." People who hold the latter position apparently believe writers and readers of such "fluff" are evading reality, hiding from the grim truths of life. As if the grimness and suffering were somehow MORE "real" than the joyful bits. Is a house in the suburbs with two cars and a jacuzzi any less "real life" than a roach-infested apartment? (During our fifty-plus years of marriage, we've lived in both as well as various environments in between.) Every work of art constructs its effects by selecting elements from the total mass of lived experience. Why shouldn't we preferentially select the good rather than the bad sometimes? Dwelling solely on the bad and labeling it "realism" reminds me of a passage in C. S. Lewis's THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS: The senior demon advises the junior tempter to induce the human "patient" to consider his feelings about the impact of bombs on human flesh as a reflection of "reality" and his feelings about sunshine and happy children as mere wishful thinking.

I suspect a large part of "serious" critics' dismissal of romance arises not just from its predominantly female audience but also from its generic requirement for a "happily ever after" or at least a "happily for now." Yet if it's actually true that half of all marriages in the U.S. end in divorce (which I've read is a faulty claim based on a misinterpretation of the statistics), then it's also true that half of all marriages last a lifetime.

Not that the Word Wenches blogger is saying no fiction should conclude with a sad outcome. What she objects to are stories (in whatever medium) that "are needlessly miserable at the end." If the disastrous or tragic conclusion grows naturally out of the story, as an inevitable result of the characters and their situation, that can work for her. That's different from a pointlessly sad ending designed for shock value or to flaunt the author's commitment to gritty "realism" -- or "simply because the writer thinks it will make for a better, more dramatic ending." I agree. "Sad" fiction isn't necessarily depressing. The finale of a tragedy by Shakespeare feels uplifting, not depressing. Seemingly meaningless destruction of the characters and their goals, to me, IS depressing. The purpose of art is to impose structure on, or discover it in, the apparent chaos of "real life."

In one of his books on literature, C. S. Lewis approaches the issue of "realism" from the opposite angle, addressing critics and readers who think the down-to-earth content of comedy is more "realistic" than the solemn grandeur of tragedy. He points out that the zany coincidences required to make a good farce work are just as artificial and therefore "unrealistic" as the plot of a well-crafted tragedy. Every genre includes some details of mundane life and excludes others, according to its particular requirements.

So we have no reason to apologize if we love to read and write upbeat fiction.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Tuesday, April 02, 2019

How to use Tarot and Astrology in Science Fiction Part 5 - The Story of A Life

How to use Tarot and Astrology in Science Fiction
Part 5
The Story of A Life  

Previous entries in this series:
Tarot:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/10/index-to-posts-about-or-involving-tarot.html

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

Part 1

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/12/how-to-use-tarot-and-astrology-in.html

Part 2

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/12/how-to-use-tarot-astrology-in-science.html

Part 3

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/01/how-to-use-tarot-and-astrology-in.html

And we looked at copyright, DRM and phone repair as it intersects the Law.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/01/copyright-drm-and-phone-repair.html

Which raised the esoteric aspects of "ownership" leading to issues of the reality of Happily Ever After leading to Part 4.

Part 4
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/01/how-to-use-tarot-and-astrology-in_22.html

And here we are at Part 5.

In 2019, Passover begins on Friday night, April 19.  On Saturday April 20, 2019 we count #1 (one day) "of the Omer" and every night until June 7 when we count the 49th day of the Omer -- the 49 day count representing the 49 days between the Israelites marching on dry land through the parted Sea, and the arrival at Mount Sinai.

That journey is an archetype.

It is a spiritual journey, the story of a life, a steep climb up out of the mindset of being subjugated to the values of one people and into a free mindset where it is possible to receive a new, different, value system.

The two value sets are not the focus of this blog post -- whichever two you might want to lift from human history, or invent, your Science Fiction Romance novel is the STORY of changing value systems.

This free radical condition, between value systems, the receptive mental state, is dramatically useful to you as a Romance writer.  Mastering this value-system-switch process will let you usher your readers into "far away places with strange sounding names."

It is an Inner Journey -- and is driven by inner conflict.

In Theme-Conflict Integration Part 6,
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/03/theme-conflict-integration-part-6.html
we touched on how a Character you are creating responds to being Under The Influence of another Character.

Previously, we discussed how writers can apply the counting of the Omer to plotting Romance novels.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/08/theme-symbolism-integration-part-3-why.html

Humans, by and large, fight to the death to get free of Influence.  Any influence -- good, bad, indifferent -- having someone else tell you what to think just arouses adamant opposition in most humans. (not all, which is what makes humans interesting.)

In the case of the fleeing Israelites, the Influence was Egyptian culture -- not just the Pharaoh bullying them, but the entire society.  The Egyptians didn't notice they had a culture -- this was long before scholars studied human behavior with anything other than astrology.  The existence of Egyptian culture was only apparent because the descendants of Jacob had inherited a different take on life-the-universe-and-everything than the Egyptians had.

The contrast created conflict.

Study what happened then, and extract a pattern for what will happen at First Contact with non-human Alien cultures.

Humans are adaptable, but not as adults.  Humanity does our adapting in childhood -- somewhat in adolescence, but mostly before age 7 or so, we are incredibly adaptable.

After about age 13 or so, dropping a value system and adopting a different one takes much more work, a vertical learning curve where we slide back a lot.

The older you get, the harder it is to internalize the non-verbal content of Values.

Values are hard to write about in fiction because:
a)Values are inherently non-verbal
b)Values are referred to by different words meaning the same thing
c)Values are referred to by the same words meaning different things

We assign words to represent inner experiences and assume everyone using that word means the same experience.

This is why the language of imagery, (such as Tarot), and the disciplined, orderly, non-verbal communication in artistic symbolism works so much better in fiction for conveying Values.

The Romance writer has to answer questions that no real human could ever answer -- for example, "Why do you love that guy?"

We don't know what we see in him, or him in her, because what we see is not something that can be "known."  It is apperceived by another sense, informed by an array of sensory input, but ultimately a thing of the Soul, not eyeballs or logic.

So experiencing the shift of Values necessary to weld two individuals into a couple is one of the essential tools of the Romance writer.  As it happens, it is also the core tool of the science fiction writer introducing humans to an Alien species.

Any non-humans we meet up with in space will be even more different from us than the Egyptians were to the descendants of Jacob (who weren't Jews, yet.)

We have discussed this upward journey of the Soul previously.  It isn't a journey of the body, from place to place, but a gaining of energy by climbing to another soul-level.  As when you climb a mountain, you store potential energy in your body -- which can be lost if you fall down the mountainside -- the Soul gains potential energy in a spiritual climb which can be lost by falling down -- and it hurts when you hit bottom.

It is ridiculously difficult to do this 40-day exercise in Spiritual preparation for receiving a new and different value system.  The forces of reality sweep in and knock you sideways -- you forget to read the page one night, you forget to do the daily exercise, and you forget that you forgot.

So they made a booklet bound like a reporter's notepad, where you can flip the pages to keep your place.

In this book:
 http://store.chabad.org/product.asp?Product=bk-mlc-counteng

Which you can also buy on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Counting-Omer-Simon-Jacobson/dp/188658723X/

...each of the 49 individual Emotions discussed comes with a do-it-today exercise that is a challenge to your ordinary way of looking at the world.  These exercises, done in this sequence, strip calluses and leave vulnerability.

As I said, it is insanely, ridiculously difficult to do this very simple thing in step with the Hebrew Calendar ( between Passover and Shavuot), but if you can achieve it (and it might take several years), you will not regret the effort.  It will improve your ability to create and depict Soul Mates who deserve and achieve a "Happily Ever After."

In fact, it will make it much easier to craft a story that convincingly presents the Happily Ever After as a very real, everyday, achievable lifestyle for a couple.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Believing in Happily Ever After Part 8, The Writer's Optimistic Voice

Believing in Happily Ever After
Part 8
The Writer's Optimistic Voice
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg 


Index to the Happily Ever After series is:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/11/index-to-believing-in-happily-ever-after.html

Doomsayers, and "end of the world" or "end of the world as we know it" people rely on stirring up fears of an uncertain future.  This awakens and energizes an intrinsic (and healthy) part of human nature.  It grabs human attention because this is the paramount survival mechanism -- fear-fight-flight.

So doomsaying has become the most lucrative business model in human history -- maybe.  Maybe in pre-history, too.  I do know many fortunes have been made (and lost) on doom crying .  Doom is big business.

Doomsaying may be the inciting incident in a Romance, or a Science Fiction novel, or a Science Fiction Romance.  It works wonders to get a story started.

But if the doom happens at the end of the book, the book will be a vast disappointment to the Romance reader.

Some version of the doom may happen -- and in fact, should materialize because it takes "show don't tell" to communicate convincingly to readers.

But that is the pivotal MIDDLE of the story -- and the last half shows how people of determination, faith, good cheer, and above all optimism, overcome, avoid or stop the doom from affecting them and their loved ones.

The most important element in convincing readers that the Happily Ever After ending can and routinely does happen in Real Life is the writer's sense of optimism.

To convince yourself that doomsayers are scam-artists exploiting an element of human nature, trying to part folks from their money or resources, look at some recorded details of what actually happened after Doomsayers paid Publicists to spread the word.

Some of the Doomsayers are actually convinced, have credentials to support their opinion, and really -- really -- see the doom coming.  They are not just sincere, but have the best interests of their audience at heart.

What the audience needs to learn from reading Romance novels is that Experts don't know everything.  Humans can extrapolate trends that can be measured, but do not necessarily take into account human free will, and other elements of science that are unknown at their time.

Here is one example -- there are many!

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-16/decline-in-world-fertility-rates-lowers-risks-of-mass-starvation


--QUOTE---

The Population Bomb Has Been Defused
The Earth and humanity will survive as fertility rates fall almost everywhere.
By Noah Smith
469
March 16, 2018, 4:00 AM MST

In 1968, Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich wrote “The Population Bomb,” warning that unchecked population growth would lead to mass starvation in the 1970s. He was just as wrong as Malthus. Global population did surge, but food production managed to keep up.

...

Still, as overall world fertility has fallen, overpopulation concerns have shifted from global to regional. If some regions continue to have big families forever, they will eventually outgrow the regions with limited population growth, causing the overall world fertility rate to go back up. People who worry about overpopulation are now concerned that some cultures will simply always have more kids.

So far, those concerns seem to be unfounded. A decade ago, many believed that Muslim culture, with its emphasis on traditional gender roles, would defy the fertility transition. But then fertility rates in majority-Muslim countries plunged. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh and Indonesia have mostly completed their fertility transitions, while Egypt’s and Pakistan’s are underway:

...
Of course, it’s worth noting that lower fertility won't immediately defuse the population bomb. The number of people in a country continues to rise for years after young people stop having lots of kids -- a phenomenon known as population momentum. Thus, the United Nations continues to project that global population will rise from about 7.6 billion today to more than 11 billion by the end of the century:

-------END QUOTE------

Other doom cries include the Debt Bomb, and things such as asteroid strikes because Nasa's CURRENT plan isn't big enough to deflect a strike due after 2100.

Straight line extrapolation of any trend always ends up predicting something that does not actually materialize.

Why don't these dooms materialize?  It's simple.  Love Conquers All.

Love catapults the most pessimistic type of person into a frame of mind to accept the possibility of success.  By shifting "mood" the human being can cause success.

Failure does happen - in life and in Romance novels.  Romance novels often start with a person at the bottom of total failure -- and they "get rescued" by some outside force or person.  Why is this popular?  Because it is real.  It does happen.

And it does happen on the largest, grandest scale - the scale that redirects human history.

Science Fiction Romance is about applying the principles of science and the study of our reality to the problems faced by our Spirits searching for a Soul Mate and an HEA.

Happiness doesn't mean having no challenges.  Happiness doesn't mean always winning.  Happiness is achieved by each individual in their very own, unique, way.

Take your Characters through Experiences that allow them to define and achieve their own specific "happiness" criteria -- not a situation your readers want, but a situation the Characters need for fulfillment.

The initial key element in shifting the mindset of your Characters is the dawning realization that doomsayers are scam artists, grifters, exploiting the raw animal impulses built into the primate body.

Once they understand they are being victimized, they will stand up for themselves and avert the doom, or turn it back on the doomsayer.  But that will be convincing to your readers only if your own personal attitude (your Voice) is founded on this understanding of the nature of Doom.  Use Poetic Justice.

That Doom averting process is the main plot element in my novel, Zelerod's Doom. 
This attitude shift from pessimism to optimism is the core theme of Zelerod's Doom.

https://www.amazon.com/Zelerods-Doom-Sime-Gen-Book-Sime-Gen-ebook/dp/B004TU5F6G/


Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http:www.jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Plausible Path To Happily Ever After by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Plausible Path To Happily Ever After
by
 Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

A good part of the target readership for Romance (and all its sub-genres) just can not see the Happily Ever After endings that we favor as realistic.

We have discussed the "realistic" Happily Ever After previously:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/11/worldbuilding-from-reality-part-5.html

But how does a writer craft a plot and a story that bring the reader to experience an HEA that the reader simply does not consider possible -- and perhaps does not consider desirable?

If the fiction lacks sufficient realism to be convincing, if it is too implausible even for a fantasy, or if it is a fantasy the readership scorns as unhealthy (which is how Science Fiction has been regarded), then the vital life lessons of Romance fiction will be lost.

Readers want to be convinced, but without giving up current beliefs.

Today, because of the condition of the world we live in, the Happily EVER After concept seems childish, and reading HEA style fiction seems mentally and emotionally unhealthy.  HFN, Happily For Now, seems far-fetched.

So there are several questions a writer has to answer for herself.  Most of the answers do not belong in the fiction being written -- but they must be woven into the worldbuilding behind the fiction, and then not mentioned.

These answers become the Characters' beliefs, the convictions the Characters won't change despite evidence to the contrary.

The HEA is the target that the "arrow" of the book must hit.

The most excited new fans of your work who will talk about it incessantly to their friends are the ones who "discover" the plausible, real-world, path to the HEA by reading your novel.

That won't happen if you set out to convince them that the HEA is real.  People don't read fiction to be "set straight" about their misconceptions.

A novel is not an argument with your readers.  It is, however, a "quest" -- a search, and a trail of breadcrumbs, clues about what questions to ask.

Fiction is not the mechanism to convey your answers to Life's Big Questions.

Fiction is the mechanism to pose Questions About Life.

Fiction questions reality.

As I've noted in previous entries here, writers write because they are bursting with something to say -- and writers write a specific genre because they have to say it to certain people.

That "bursting" point often comes when a new answer to an age-old question comes clear.  The writer has a new truth to impart to others.  But having a truth, and saying it, are not the same thing.

Novels are a conversation, often between a group of readers and a group of writers -- very much like a panel discussion at a Convention where writers answer questions from the audience and argue with the other writers while the audience is jumping up and down.

One signature trait of writers -- we all argue for a hobby.

But the trick to arguing is to direct your energies away from "winning" (e.g. changing the other person's mind to agree with yours) and toward posing questions that may (or may not) lead the other person to rethink their positions.  Of course, in the process, you might come to question your own position.  Thinking can be the most dangerous thing a human can do.

What if there really is no such thing as a Happily Ever After?

What if Happiness is not achievable? Remember: "What if..." is one of the key ingredients in science fiction, and this blog is about science fiction romance.

As noted previously in these entries, many times you can't change someone's mind on a subject because that someone did not ever make up his own mind.  Rather, people (having no energy to waste) adopt the opinions of others.  Once adopted, an opinion and whatever factoid is the excuse for holding the opinion, will lie unquestioned and unquestionable.

We discussed some of this here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/06/theme-plot-integration-part-17-crafting.html

Where we cited research published in early 2017 confirming the psychological traits delineated by research in the early 1970's.

Speculation in Psychology is that human reasoning processes developed to facilitate the ability to "blend in" with the tribe or group, to keep domestic peace and direct energies toward fending off enemies, not fighting among ourselves.  Thus we adopt protective coloration of opinion -- and come to solemnly believe opinions that are not our own -- and come to resist to the death any "facts" that contradict the "opinion" that keeps our allies fighting for us, not against us.

This could be a good description of the old fashioned nuclear family.

I've said previously that family is rooted in privacy -- what happens in this house stays in this house.  The Family presents a united front to the community.  Don't air your dirty laundry in public.

See this article in the New Yorker Magazine:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds

------------quote--------
The Stanford studies became famous. Coming from a group of academics in the nineteen-seventies, the contention that people can’t think straight was shocking. It isn’t any longer. Thousands of subsequent experiments have confirmed (and elaborated on) this finding. As everyone who’s followed the research—or even occasionally picked up a copy of Psychology Today—knows, any graduate student with a clipboard can demonstrate that reasonable-seeming people are often totally irrational. Rarely has this insight seemed more relevant than it does right now. Still, an essential puzzle remains: How did we come to be this way?

In a new book, “The Enigma of Reason” (Harvard), the cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber take a stab at answering this question. Mercier, who works at a French research institute in Lyon, and Sperber, now based at the Central European University, in Budapest, point out that reason is an evolved trait, like bipedalism or three-color vision. It emerged on the savannas of Africa, and has to be understood in that context.

Stripped of a lot of what might be called cognitive-science-ese, Mercier and Sperber’s argument runs, more or less, as follows: Humans’ biggest advantage over other species is our ability to coƶperate. Coƶperation is difficult to establish and almost as difficult to sustain. For any individual, freeloading is always the best course of action. Reason developed not to enable us to solve abstract, logical problems or even to help us draw conclusions from unfamiliar data; rather, it developed to resolve the problems posed by living in collaborative groups.

“Reason is an adaptation to the hypersocial niche humans have evolved for themselves,” Mercier and Sperber write. Habits of mind that seem weird or goofy or just plain dumb from an “intellectualist” point of view prove shrewd when seen from a social “interactionist” perspective.

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

Read the whole article and ponder this perspective when considering the nearly panic stricken rejection of the Happily Ever After ending by such a broad spectrum of the general public.

The threat of Happiness is somehow alarming.

Applying this research to the question of why Happiness would be a threat, you can see that being the ONLY happy couple in a sea of abject misery would make you (and your children) a target of resentment, rejection, and eventually ejection from the Group.

The miserable, or Happy Only Temporarily (HFN or Happy For Now) couples might number among them a majority of jealous types who might think the Happy Couple is happy because of "things" (nice house, car, job) that couple has that others don't have.

Perhaps the Happy Couple would be seen as having happiness they don't deserve.

QUESTION: what can a human do to "deserve" happiness?

There's a Romance Plot in that question -- depict a Couple doing what it takes (regardless of personal cost) to earn Happiness and then actually getting what they think they earned.

Perhaps the majority of the miserable couples would believe the Happy Couple is happy because of what they own.  But, "You Didn't Build That" -- you  have success only by utilizing the hard, sweaty, miserable work of the vast majority who actually pay for the roads and bridges, electricity generating dams, and other infrastructure.  Therefore, what you earn is not yours but belongs to everyone.

QUESTION: Is the emotion of "happiness" a consequence of possessions?

There's a Romance plot in that.  The US Constitution is predicated on the idea that humans, by right of being human, are entitled to PURSUE Happiness, but not necessarily to attain it.  It's the theory of "equality of opportunity" but not "equality of outcome."  A great moral argument lies in that -- the sort that can make or break marriages.

Think again about that scientific research about human cognition.  It exists to allow us to blend in, to adopt others opinions and assumptions, to knuckle under, to avoid conflict with those we depend upon by never (ever) changing our minds.

To discard the opinion of the Group (because of a newly discovered fact) is literally suicidal -- unthinkable to a sane person.  There's too much at stake - spouse, kids, career, social standing, entre to higher circles.  Facts are nothing but false information.  True information reinforces alliances with the Group.

Hard facts, the "Cold Equations" of reality do not figure into beliefs, unless the one person ("Leader" maybe, or priest or pundit) who calls the tune actually takes hard facts into account.

QUESTION: Does being that "Leader" of thought guarantee Happiness, or Happily Ever After?

There's a Romance Plot in that: consider a Couple that first met inside a Cult (like, for example, the Manson Cult) and saw it was headed for suicide.  Suppose that Happy Couple managed to escape.  Would the Cult Leader who lost that Couple, and all of his followers, still be "Happy?"  Were they ever Happy?  Could the Couple reach a "Happily Ever After" by having escaped?  Can they find a community where almost all the Couples are "Happily Ever After" achievers?

There's the problem the modern Romance writer faces.  We are writing for a readership living alone, disconnected, among a vast sea of troubled and dysfunctional couples with children. Many readers are teens feeling trapped in a dysfunctional family, having never encountered a functional family.

There is a huge percentage of people who do not have experience of observing a family being functional.  They don't have a mental model of what functional families feel and sound like.  "Leave It To Beaver" and "The Brady Bunch" did a disservice in that functionality was depicted as a bit too "rosy."

The bliss promised at the wedding is never sustained through children, school, extracurricular carpooling, job layoffs, skyrocketing bills and decreasing income.

We discussed that at some length here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/01/if-hea-is-implausible-how-come-it.html

And also in the context of the Wedding itself in Why Do We Cry At Weddings, which is two parts inside the larger Theme-Symbolism Integration series?

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/08/theme-symbolism-integration-part-2-why.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/08/theme-symbolism-integration-part-3-why.html

So again, think of that fully functional, Happily Ever After Family embedded in a community of miserable or broken families mired in dysfunctionality.

Do you, as a writer, have in your real life a "model" -- real life people -- who are currently living a Happily Ever After life?  Do you know a family where the elders are dying off after having lived a Happily Ever After (Norman Rockwell painting style) perfect life?  Do you know a family where the elders are dying off and the younger generation and its children are carrying on the tradition of the Happily Ever After perfect life?

Is that family living alone amidst a sea of miserable families and family-fragments?

Given that cognitive research cited above, I rather imagine that the only environment where you will find HAPPILY EVER AFTER families is one where the vast majority of families in the community are also living happily ever after.

Why would that be?

Birds of a feather flock together?  (OK, you all know how I just love cliche).

It's not enough (for humans -- Aliens is a different discussion) for one, single, lonely family to live "Happily Ever After."  Either they move away to join a happy community, or they create one around themselves -- or they make it to Happily For Now and no further.

That's right, real Romance fiction has to come in long series of long novels, like Gini Koch's ALIEN series.  Life is crafted one step at a time, and the more beautiful and happy the goal of those steps may be, the more fierce the opposition, just as Gini Koch has depicted.

Gini has her Characters at the stage of married with two children, and building a Family By Choice.  The married couple adopts, then fosters, then allies with other couples with children, until their community numbers in the dozens -- possibly hundreds.

If the goal of the Romance experience, (finding a love interest, cultivating a Relationship, maybe living with each other, planning a future) is to reach the Happily Ever After steady state of life, then the goal of Romance is Family.

Usually, the Romance novel ends at "I love you," or "Will you marry me?" or perhaps at the Wedding and all the relatives crying at the wedding, dancing the night away and eating chocolate cake with white frosting.

We get a glimpse of the potential future where nothing goes wrong.

Usually, the concept of children is just an abstraction, and the idea of raising children is pictured without screaming, feverish nights, teething, sibling rivalry, or one having to give up a career to follow the other to a better paying job.

Most young people looking for that first serious Romantic Encounter would not have in mind the image of such a strife-ridden Family, torn this way and that by finances and illness, sagging under the burdens of pregnancy and armfuls of infants when thinking of Happiness.

Young people don't regard a long life dotted with brief moments of contentment as Happily Ever After.

Our culture does not now provide an image of Happiness amidst challenges, adversity, or the long-long haul of endurance necessary to build something lasting -- a family dynasty that produces productive and industrious people who know how to be happy in circumstances that most people would view as inherently miserable.

As we looked at the singular Family that is Happily Ever After embedded in a community of misery, we noted how some people view possessions or financial circumstances as the root source of happiness.  This view is reinforced and encouraged by modern media and currently published Romance novels (of all mixed genre types).

Get some physical thing, or a job or income level, title, prestige, social position, -- garner the admiration of others for your art, or whatever you pride yourself on -- and your entire inner self will switch from dark misery to bright joy.

The Commercial Establishment encourages this with things like "Mother's Day" and "Father's Day" both holidays created and sustained by mercantile interests.  Buy something = Make Someone Happy.  Christmas likewise = Buy A Child A Toy And MAKE them happy.  MAKE being the operative word.

The grain of truth behind the connection between material wealth and happiness is what makes it possible to found an entire culture on this assumption.

Now put together this Material Things Make Happiness cultural assumption with the psychological studies indicating the purpose and point of human cognition and fact-free opinion forming.

Once convinced that finding the RIGHT GIFT will force someone who is miserable to become happy -- no fact will change that opinion.

It becomes an opinion upon which life itself hangs.  We must give children gifts on Christmas or they will be scarred for life.  Likewise material gifts at birthdays, back to school, etc become a habit to give and a habit to receive.

How is it even remotely possible to conceptualize an entire LIFE lived "Happily Ever After" if "happiness" is absolutely dependent on material objects owned?

The TV News is filled with images of tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes etc wiping out entire houses, villages, families.  War slaughters so many, how can the bereaved emerge "happy" (never mind ever after).

TV News is full of Great People -- people with multiple Titles, heads of corporations, towering prize winners, toppled from grace by an injudicious email or phone call.

Given this tangible vision of how fragile possessions and position are in this life, how can "Ever After" have any meaning?

How is it possible to life Happily Ever After when at any moment the entire life built with such arduous effort can be just wiped out?

In a group culture that "believes" happiness is caused by things, and given human nature is to resist to the death allowing facts to alter beliefs, where are you going to find readers to accept (nevermind believe in) the HEA and thus Romance that is not just sexual lust run amok?

Think about that and maybe you can see why Science Fiction is the right genre to "cross" into Romance to depict the Happily Ever After.

Science Fiction is the Literature of Ideas, and the core Idea common to almost all science fiction is "Suspension of Disbelief."

Right now, the majority readership of Romance disbelieves in the HEA.

Add science fiction to Romance, and suspend their Disbelief.

Then ask some of those pesky questions about human nature and the construct we call reality.  Show (don't tell) a Character noticing a Functional Family embedded in a community of miserable families.  Ferret out that happy family's secret, the thing that makes them different, the Idea that lets them experience "happiness" amidst misery.

A war-torn city is one setting that lends itself to this investigation.

A drug-saturated Inner City that's Gang Dominated is another such setting.

Or as Gini Koch chose, Washington DC and the duplicitous swamp works well as a backdrop for a functional family.

Fiction is an art form like all others that depends on contrast to become vividly memorable.

Let contrast between emotional tenor of the foreground Characters and the tangled, dark threat/misery of the background setting rev up the power of your novels.

Why do we cry at weddings? Is it because we see all the sadness to come?  Or is it because we can't tolerate the brightness of real happiness?

Perhaps the disbelief in the Happily Ever After is rooted in the Idea that the physical body (all Romance Leading Females are "beautiful" and all males "Handsome") is a material possession.  We live in a culture of body building and weight loss Icons -- as if the shape and form of your physical body is something you get to CHOOSE.

We see the physical body as the source of Happiness.  You have to have the right shape, and the right clothes (or absence thereof), the right hair in length and color, and the right "moves" in grace and power.

The physical body is a thing you acquire by hard work (starving, exercise, expensive face "work" and capped teeth.)

With this focus on the appearance of the body delineating the place in the Group, in society, in career, it is small wonder that "Happiness" is regarded as arising from the physical appearance.

Here is another "read" on our current culture as of Spring 2017 by none other than a Rasmussen poll.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/lifestyle/holidays/may_2017/fewer_americans_see_motherhood_as_a_woman_s_most_important_role

Fewer Americans see motherhood as a woman's most important role.  Also note the birthrate is alarmingly low in the United States.

Today, career is more important even than pregnancy (despite research showing a pregnant woman's stress level adversely affects fetus) -- but some companies are hiring pregnant employees some help.  This means mothers are not only out-sourcing infant care and childhood education ( day nurses, and daycare) but now also out-sourcing decision making about pregnancy itself.

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/maternity-concierges-let-you-focus-your-job-while-they-prepare-n757966

In 2014, we had 1.86 live births per woman - that is a fast shrinking population. 2.0/woman would be break-even, not growth.  The population is still growing because of longevity, but at about the rate the economy is growing.  Anyone who understands the dynamics of these connections, and who equates happiness with material possessions, will see a bleak future, not a happily ever after one.

Here is an interactive graph with loads of information on population growth.

https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&idim=country:USA:CHN:JPN&hl=en&dl=en

And if you believe the cultural assumption that the material body is the source of happiness and that motherhood is not the woman's most important role, it is obvious that the fleeting appeasement of the sexual appetite is the correct model for the achievement of Happiness.

It is clear why an entire culture has adopted (eagerly) the equating of Romance with Great Sex.

Great Sex equals Happiness.

And since Great Sex is a truly fleeting experience, then likewise the only possibility for happiness is the HFN.  If something else doesn't go wrong in the bedroom, then age will wipe out, or at least reduce, the Great Sex.  You have to be careful not to have children because crying infants tend to reduce the frequency of Great Sex, so then you won't be happy.  

QUESTION: What if sexual satisfaction has no relationship whatsoever to Happiness?  Would the Happily Ever After ending then make sense?

There's a Romance plot in that question.  What sort of Romance can the severely wounded war veteran have if sexuality is eliminated?

Or flip that around, and use the "Arranged Marriage" scenario where two complete strangers share a wedding night -- and dutifully have sex to produce a pregnancy and an heir.  What could ignite Romance between them?

There are many novels on the market today that explore love (and hate) that grows after an arranged marriage -- but many more about escaping an arranged marriage for the arms of Romance.

Also marriages that are "for convenience" - a business deal - form the basis of many Romances.

Arranged Marriages usually involve aristocracy, often Monarchy.  So the details focus on a unique couple with unique problems -- as the scenario discussed above where the happy couple lives amidst miserable families.

But what if all the marriages of everyone the couple knows have been arranged?  And what if the norm, the vast majority, of those families are indeed happy, stable amidst challenges, losses, bereavements, and attacks by hostiles?

Suppose this community is the last shred of humanity alive in this galaxy, and the marriages are arranged by an A.I. -- maybe not the single power running the whole show, but an A.I. specialist in choosing humans to mate both for genetics and for happiness.  Could an A.I. pair Soul Mates?

To use that artistic trick of contrast, you would have to tell the story of that one miserable family amidst a sea of happiness, and the temptation would be to tell the story of how all those happy couples are really victims of horrendous misery, tricked into a dull and manipulated life.

To turn that story to science fiction, you have to reverse that situation and convince your readers that all those A.I. dominated human families actually ARE happy, and living happily ever after.  You have to show don't tell how the single miserable family is outcast because they don't "buy into" whatever belief system is sustaining the culture's happiness (according to the psychological research cited above).

The writer's temptation is to prove that the miserable family is correct and to break that culture out of its A.I. domination.

But first imagine what you'd have to build into their world that would bring the miserable family into the HEA all the other families are living?  Then try to develop a way to sell that entire concept to a modern readership.  How could you get today's readers to root for the miserable couple to join the happy majority instead of exposing their happiness as a fraud?

How could you make that miserable family's journey to happiness seem so plausible and so desirable that the modern reader would be rooting for their success and then be satisfied with the ending?

There are two ways to do this.  Either choose a story and find a readership for it, or choose a readership and craft a story that expresses their most dearly held beliefs.

Who believes in the HEA?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

If The HEA is Implausible, How Come It Happens?

If The HEA is Implausible, How Come It Happens?
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

As I've mentioned many times, one of the hardest things about Romance gaining the respect it deserves is the firm conviction on the part of a huge segment of the potential audience that the Happily Ever After "ending" is impossible.

Life, they say, just does not go like that.  The Happily For Now ending is all you can ever expect.

Well, true, if life is long enough, there will be challenges, failures, ignominious defeats, many tears, and many-many funerals to attend.

This is all especially true if you marry and have children.  Children are the joy of life, but they are also the source of buckets of tears.

We all know that, yet STILL persist in understanding the world and our lives in it as heading toward an HEA.

Overcoming the initial obstacles to finding and hooking up with that one special Soul Mate should be the End Of The Story -- and from there on, you live the Happily Ever After.

Just get through the Wedding Day (a real challenge for most!) and it's clear sailing after that.

Those who scorn Romance feel that in reality there is no way that can ever happen. 

And yet, in actual reality -- the real reality we live in every day -- such long-long-stable-marriages actually do exist.

Here is an example that hit the Internet some months ago. 

 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-dorset-28946521

---------quote------------
The pair say the secret of married life is kindness, love and tolerance

A couple who met as teenagers 10 years before the start of World War Two have celebrated 80 years of marriage.

Maurice and Helen Kaye, from Bournemouth, met in 1929 when they were 17 and 16 respectively.

They courted for four years because Mrs Kaye's mother wanted her older sister to be married first.

The couple, who are now 102 and 101, said the secret to a happy marriage was being tolerant of each other and being willing to "forgive and forget".

The pair, one of Britain's longest-married couples, plan to celebrate their oak wedding anniversary with children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
line break
-------------end quote-------

There's a lovely video on that page you should watch and think about.

This video and some of its images spread through the internet like wildfire.  But nevertheless, there are those who are still convinced such a thing never EVER happens in "reality."

Because we believe in such happenings, such lives, we are the unrealistic people. 

Personally, I don't think there's any great advantage to living within the confines of "reality" -- I think the ability to imagine what is impossible is the Human Trait responsible for all human progress.

But still, a reality-check every once in a while is absolutely necessary to keep progress on course. 

This couple is real, not fantasy.  They are the reality check that those who scorn Romance because of the HEA need to consider.

The HEA is not a fantasy.  It is the reality of real life, and the standard by which success should be measured.

Note this couple has great-grandchildren.  Don't for a moment suppose those 80 years were without challenges, tears, failures, ignominy, and defeat.  But such low-moments in life do not mar HAPPINESS.  Such moments are integral components to happiness.

The HEA is the major, envelope theme for all Romance genre stories, novels, videos, etc.  One sub-theme that should be a part of each HEA is that sadness, loss, grieving, failure, and even embarrassment are components of Happiness.

Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Theme-Plot Integration - Part 2: Fallacy As Theme


Last week we listed a number of prior posts that form the foundation of this advanced writing exercise of integrating two huge skill-sets, THEME and PLOT. 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-1-never-let.html

I pointed out the origin of PR (publicity, public relations, shaping "public" opinion) and how that science has been so effective in molding our current culture. 

In November 2012, I saw the following tweet on twitter:
"Common perspective in India: when something comes from the Internet, it's free of cost" #ebkstats @DigiBookWorld

Please also note this Guest Post on this blog:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/sharing-is-piracy.html

That "common perspective" concept is what I'm talking about here.  "if it's from the internet, it's free." is a fallacy for us and common sense for them. 

Remember our whole, long, discussion of "fallacy?" 
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/09/theme-worldbuilding-integraton-part-2.html

I saw a post on Facebook in December 2012 from a person talking to a professional writer.  The person wrote that during a bit of research on the Web, looking for a quote from a deceased writer's work, a "free download" pdf of the novel came up.  The researcher was utterly astonished that anyone could possibly think they were doing a Good Deed to post free downloads of books -- and went to find one to buy that would pay the estate properly. 

I'm astonished anyone is astonished that book piracy is now considered a Good Deed.  That's a cultural concept, and a fallacy -- study it because it's exactly what either binds a couple in Romance, or repels Soul Mates from each other.  Fallacies are wondrous sources of conflict for your novel plots because they are, inherently, the material of THEME.  Pick the right fallacy, and you've got Theme-Plot Integration that is effortless, seamless, and beautiful to behold.

I used the key concepts behind misnomers and fallacies in my Sime~Gen Novel, Unto Zeor, Forever - which just came out from audible.com and also has paper and ebook editions.




If you're going to write about Alien Romance, you've got to be able to straddle the rift illustrated by that "fallacy" that the internet is free, and "sharing" anything is a Good Deed.  You must be capable of writing  convincingly from each perspective in turn, then resolve the difference (not for yourself personally, but as your characters would resolve their problem).  You must reduce the chasm for your readers, so both parties in the argument can straddle that chasm and hold hands, and admit they are Soul Mates. 

You can learn to do this if you understand culture.

But last week, I didn't mention one item that I've talked about a lot in these posts, the study of what culture is. 

A writer needs to study the definition of "culture" (anthropological definition) until it becomes very clear where inside the writer's own mind "culture" resides and what precisely that "culture" bin inside the writer's mind currently contains (and where that content came from; what fallacies reside there).  Then the writer must study culture as it functions in a lot of people that writer knows -- writers being natural people-watchers, this study does not take a lot of discipline.  In fact, it's hard for a writer-type person to resist becoming obsessed with this study.

Beyond studying yourself and people you know very well, though, you must extend that study to the general public around you, and then to the whole world.

Why does a writer need a "feel" -- on a deep, subconscious level -- for culture in order to write hot romance?  Because the hottest of heats is generated where cultures conflict.

And anthropologists have identified "female culture" and "male culture" -- in fact, there's women's language and men's language.  Human cultures usually develop private ceremonials for men and for women separately, in addition to public events that involve both.  In modern America, you see that in house parties where somehow the women end up in one room (often the kitchen or back porch) while men end up clustered in another room, (often the parlor or living room). 

I'm currently reading a self-published mixed-genre SF/Romance with time travel jumbled in.  It's a relationship driven novel.  I should like it.  But the author appears to have skipped this step of studying culture until it's second-nature, then learning how to integrate that study into Theme-Plot integration.  The pieces of this novel just don't meet at the seams -- like a building that's been added-onto and the floors and walls miss the seam by a couple inches, disorienting the eye.

So the study of how Public Relations science is being employed by the Big Money to shape our culture is important to the SF/Romance fiction writer who needs to create verisimilitude.

It's also important to the futurologist who wants to worldbuild a background for a novel set in the future.  You must extrapolate, using "What if ...?"  "If only ..." and also "If this goes on ..." starting with trends today, and extending them along the path they are traveling.  Then find the forces (such as the subconscious conflicts in the minds of those allocating Big Money to PR thrusts) that will CHANGE that future course.

Here is one such present-time trend to work this exercise with.

--------------QUOTE---------------
Big Brands Are Pouring Money Into Their Own Custom News Sites

On top of their multi-million dollar advertising budgets, huge companies are now diving into an arena previously dominated by traditional media. They're producing videos, releasing interviews with top executives, and providing unique looks inside their organization on their own specialized websites.

It's a way to present a carefully crafted message to consumers, and change the way traditional media interacts with companies. Content marketing overall has become at least a $16.6 billion business, and these sites are taking a growing share. 

We spoke to Alexander Jutkowitz, the managing partner partner of Group SJR, a digital firm which helps run content sites for GE, Credit Suisse, Target, and Barneys about why companies are doing it.

Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Where did the idea come from?

There are a few trends in the marketplace or in the world that we know about. There's media fragmentation, there is a lot of content, but frankly not a lot of great content, and there are a lot of organizations that have incredible knowledge that does not on a regular basis see the light of day. 

If it does, it's in a traditional sort of marketing model, whether that's advertising or even broadcast advertising. It's hard to transmit a lot of knowledge in 30 and 60 second spots. Traditional communications have been a bit lackluster in that sense because it's all about clear promotional content, and not content that really impacts and transfers knowledge.

There is both an opportunity for a great organization to communicate and to trend, and to really have their knowledge impact the world.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-ge-target-and-credit-suisse-are-creating-content-2012-11#ixzz2BSOkdBII

-------------END QUOTE----------------

WRITERS REMEMBER!! "content" = "writing you can get paid for doing." 

I have recently seen tweets about how much a fiction writer makes.  It's less than minimum wage when you actually account for your time, and pay for all your expenses.  Finding ancillary sources of revenue you can tap using the same expensively-gained and maintained skills you use for fiction writing must be a part of your business plan as a self-employed writer. 

"Content" has value when it says something startling, something that stops the eye, baffles the mind, raises questions -- i.e. says something philosophically challenging to the reader. 

Where do you "get" the ability to listen to a business person (a publisher of a website, for example) say "I need suchandso" and just instantly come back with "How about this?" and provide what that content-publisher needs right now to attract eyeballs to the advertising on that website?

When the "this" that you propose turns out to go viral -- your employer asks, "How do you think of these things?" and you respond (having studied my posts here on Hollywood) "Oh, it just came to me." 

Why does it "just come to you?"  Very simple.  In a word, Philosophy.  Or, as writers refer to it, Theme. 

With your subconscious trained (hard) to be lean and strong in Philosophy, theme-plot integrated cultural statements "just come to you."  These vast ideas erupt in response to the vision of dollar-signs.  And that's just how it works. 

So the hours and hours you spend researching and learning the historical origins of PR allow you to understand how PR campaigns driven by the Big Money shape our ambient culture, but you don't get paid for those hours spent studying until you produce a piece of fiction that triggers that ambient culture into paying money to imbibe in your product. 

The entire concept of Love and Romance having some connection to "Marriage" has become a part of our culture as the result of a PR campaign.  (research that!)

So for our example in this study of Theme-Plot integration, we're looking at the broad subject of the "fallacy" and how it operates in the human mind, the "belief system" to shape our perception of reality.  Perception is more real to us than the objective reality itself. 

The residual results of any PR campaign can be found by listening for the phrase "they say."  Or "everybody knows."  Then watch the next generation of teens raised by those who know "they say."  Those new teens will not even question, but just know, what used to be a "they say."  It won't be "they" that say, but the teens themselves.  In fact, they may invent some word to describe that concept, thinking they originated the concept.  4-generations -- study the 4-generation span on these cultural beliefs, and learn to extrapolate them into the future.

This is how fallacies become bedrock cultural cornerstones never to be questioned.

Publishers perpetuate these fallacies by enshrining them in genre rules.  The Romance Genre (as well as Science Fiction itself) has fallen victim to this process. 

To illustrate how to investigate and then utilize an institutionalized fallacy to construct a theme-plot integrated story, we are studying the fallacy that Romance Is An Emergency. 

Maybe you don't think that's a fallacy.  It's OK - even true things can be treated as fallacy in fiction.  That process is the core of developing plot-worthy conflict. 

We left off last week with the following questions:

--------QUOTE------------
Why is Romance Genre singled out for scorn when all other fiction is even more unbelievable?

Romance Genre is special because everyone, in their heart of hearts, wants not just Romance, but entree into everlasting Love, solid and unbreakable Relationships, Family, enriched life.

Not only does everyone want it, everyone knows they are destined for it. 

Yet, time after time, in reality, they have had that promise of fulfillment snatched away.  The only possible psychological defense left is to believe staunchly that Happily Ever After is not possible.

Is Romance an Emergency?  When it happens, is it a life-or-death crisis in which one must drop everything and dash willy-nilly after the person who has evoked this vision of absolute fulfillment?

And if Romance is indeed an Emergency, then how should we treat it? 

How do we respond to Emergencies and Crises? 

Is there a malfunction in our society's training about how to respond to Emergencies and Crises?

Is our audience indoctrinated with some kind of fallacy that has warped our response to Emergencies? 

If so, what fallacy?  Where did it come from?  We, as writers, no doubt share that fallacy, so why bother to pinpoint it? 

The fallacy in our Emergency Response habits, if we can articulate it, can become our Theme, and the PINPOINTING of that fallacy  can become the plot of the breakout Romance that I've been talking about in this blog since I started looking for how Romance Genre can achieve the respect it deserves. 

---------END QUOTE-----------

The thesis I put forward last week is that Romance stories written as if falling in love is an emergency imbue the whole genre with the aura of a scam.  Scam artists use emergencies as a means of using their mark's greatest strengths (in the case of Romance, it's usually Trust) against them.

So when a Romance telegraphs that the "ending" -- the destination for this couple's relationship -- is HEA, or Happily Ever After, it is concurrently telegraphing that the emotional payoff of reading this novel will be unending pain -- it will evoke real world loss and real world hopelessness if you "buy into" the premise.

So that raises the two questions: a) is Romance an Emergency, and b) Is there something wrong with how we respond (emotionally) to emergencies?

Well, I have of course evolved my own answers to those questions.  Think yours through before reading further here. 

a) No, Romance is not an Emergency.
b) Yes, our culture has conditioned us via fallacy inculcation to respond to emergencies incorrectly.  The conditioning is so deep (via PR or Propaganda that I mentioned last week, a psychological Judo) that we can not find that fallacy to correct it. 

Those are my answers.  What good can my answers do you?  None.  None whatsoever.

But here is something that might give you a handle on how to construct your own novel about Romance. 

I will lay out my "work" (as in algebra, a derivation) so you can follow along and substitute your own reasoning point by point.  Again, my answers are of no value to you, but my system of reasoning through this problem might be.

Here's how it goes.

a) Romance is not an Emergency

Romance, usually arriving during a major transit of Neptune, is a matter of the Soul.  In fact, life itself -- existence on this material plane -- is really an adventure the Soul is taking, a dip into "life" to do a job.  It's a little like being in the armed services and being sent "abroad" to a theater where (if there's a war, or even if there is no actual war) the action is.

We come into this life to accomplish something, maybe more than one thing per lifetime.  There is a goal to our personal existence which is only about our own personal Soul -- and simultaneously that goal contributes to a larger job, known in the Occultist studies as The Great Work, a job which G-d created us to do.  Kabbalists identify that goal as making in this world a dwelling place for G-d, and that place is inside what they term your "Heart" -- not so much the physical organ as a level of being which powers your existence.  Very mystical stuff.

For the more highly evolved souls, Neptune transits bring prophecy, glimpses of the real reality underlying our reality, the truth behind the facts.  For the rest of us, Neptune drapes the world in a dense fog of wish-fulfillment fantasy, distortion, misunderstanding, (sometimes lies told or believed), or possibly of idealism, and very likely even a close encounter of the third kind with Religion, faith, belief in the impossible.

Bottom line: Neptune transits = Confusion

But during that state of confusion -- and in a lifetime, it's very probable you will experience many different sorts of Neptune transits that blur the world -- during that state of confusion is when Romance erupts into Life.

No wonder people marry the wrong person -- in a couple years, when the transit wears off, the hard edges of reality define the Relationship and it is no longer an Ideal.  Under Neptune, people marry to "rescue" (as in reform an alcoholic) and get trapped in the fog of co-dependency.

But for the more mature Souls, that "wrong person" ultimately turns out to be the right one, the most solid and dependable Relationship, the true Soul-Mate.

A Soul-Mate Relationship that arrives outside the window of a Neptune Transit doesn't begin with what is normally recognized as Romance. 

So, if the arriving Other is a true Soul Mate and this Relationship (whatever its form) is what this life is really about, then there's no way out of it.  The pairing will fasten down hard, and there can be no getting away from each other.  (as mentioned last week, Ahab and his whale, and Helen of Troy).

In that case, the arrival of that Other into your life is no emergency.  The Relationship will procede to Bonding.  You have only to choose (G-d endows us with Free Will) and accept.  Some call it karma.  If it doesn't crystallize in this life, no emergency -- next life will be soon enough. 

If this Other is not the true Soul Mate -- then nothing can be lost if the Other drifts away. 

So if there does exist such a thing as a Happily Ever After with a Soulmate, then that is the inevitable consequence of living well -- even if not in this lifetime.  Not everyone pairs in every lifetime.  The arrival of a Soulmate (even if not for the first time) is always exciting, energizing, riveting attention, consuming and delightful -- of highest priority -- but, it's not an emergency.

The principle is that what belongs to you is yours.  It's part of you.  You can't lose it and it can't be taken away from you (for long). 

b) Yes, our culture has conditioned us via fallacy inculcation to respond to emergencies incorrectly.

This is the core of the theme.  The Soul-Mate concept leading to the Happily Ever After is the signature of the Romance Genre, so it's not something we can challenge or alter, and in truth it is not the source of the Romance Genre being scorned.

So let's search for the fallacy in the way we respond to emergencies. 

Any soul-mate story's worldbuilding has to include some paranormal aspect, some presence or evidence of a G-d driven universe, because the very concept "soul" is paranormal by definition. 

In a universe with no G-d presence, how could you define Soul, the immortal spark of God-breath that energizes you and gives you stark individuality?  All Romance is set in a G-d driven universe, even when the Romantic liaison is just Happily For Now. 

So here we challenge the way we meet emergencies. 

Here's how it's done at the pinnacle of our society, out in public, by the public servants.  Here's the "model" we grew up seeing on TV News, and now all over the internet whenever an emergency happens.

-------------quote--------
DHS moves to allow oil tankers in Northeast to ease fuel shortage

Published November 02, 2012

Associated Press

The Department of Homeland Security is temporarily waiving some maritime rules to allow foreign oil tankers coming from the Gulf of Mexico to enter Northeastern ports.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says she is waiving the Jones Act, which prohibits international cargo ships from transporting oil between U.S. ports , until Nov. 13.

The rule is being temporarily waived to help ease the fuel shortage in the Northeast in the wake of Superstorm Sandy.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/11/02/dhs-moves-to-allow-oil-tankers-in-northeast-to-ease-fuel-shortage
---------------end quote ----------

And another Hurricane Sandy aftermath story from the news:

-------QUOTE-----------
‘No Red Tape’? New Jersey Turns Away Non-union Relief Crews
Posted on November 2, 2012

How desperate is hurricane-ravaged New Jersey? Not desperate enough to suspend a union monopoly that keeps the state in the bottom ten states for economic competitiveness (and #48 for business friendliness). Relief crews from Alabama who were specifically called to New Jersey found themselves diverted to Long Island, NY after they arrived because they use non-union labor. Alabama is a right-to-work state.

WAFF-TV of Hunstville, AL reports:

Crews from Huntsville, as well as Decatur Utilities and Joe Wheeler out of Trinity headed up there this week, but Derrick Moore, one of the Decatur workers, said they were told by crews in New Jersey that they can’t do any work there since they’re not union employees….

Understandably, Moore said they’re frustrated being told “thanks, but no thanks.”

With so much at stake–and lives still in danger–it would seem logical to tell special interests to step aside.

On Wednesday, while visiting cleanup efforts in New Jersey in the company of Gov. Chris Christie, President Barack Obama vowed: “We are not going to tolerate red tape, we are not going to tolerate bureaucracy.”

WAFF-TV: News, Weather and Sports for Huntsville, AL

Read more: http://conservativebyte.com/2012/11/no-red-tape-new-jersey-turns-away-non-union-relief-crews/#ixzz2B5Ff2JkS
---------END QUOTE -------------

It's this way with ALL our laws now, all the "rules" -- all the "regulations."

And it's the way we live our everyday lives under the rules and regulations of societal behavior.

In an Emergency, it's then OK -- in fact required -- to throw the rules and regulations out, to CUT THE RED TAPE.

In fact, after suffering under some ridiculous rule, we consciously or subconsciously create emergencies so we CAN toss the pesky rule out.

The fallacy?  That rules, regulations and laws are supposed to be for NORMAL TIMES. 

Do an ALTERNATE UNIVERSE worldbuilding exercise with that idea.

What would an urban fantasy set in "today" but in an alternate world be like if in that world the fallacy that laws exist for the purpose of defining and constraining normal, everyday behavior had never taken root?

What if the only laws on the books were those to be obeyed in emergencies?

Take that as your exercise for this week.

If you need a SETTING to work out a "CUT THE RED TAPE" fallacy/Romance plot, here's one that works with a natural inevitability:

 http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/15/us-edisonmission-bankruptcy-idUSBRE8BE02O20121215

Next week we'll continue exploring how to extract a theme from commonly believed fallacies.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Theme-Plot Integration - Part 1: Never Let A Good Emergency Go To Waste

So we continue to practice walking and chewing gum at the same time.  All of these posts focus on the nitty gritty of the craft of writing, with special emphasis on the specific challenges facing a writer who is combining Science Fiction or Paranormal with Romance of any type. 

I specialize in the relationship driven plot, (not always sexual or even romantic, as there was no romance between Ahab and the Whale!), but my own favorite type of story is Romance! 

Romance plots don't necessarily exclude war.  Do remember Helen of Troy!  And thinking of Helen of Troy, do remember that the entire situation of Helen of Troy was a blend of politics and religion, just as I have been discussing in the (so-far) 9 part series titled Worldbuilding With Fire And Ice.

So traditionally, from its very inception, the Romance genre has always included not only combat in all forms, but also the paranormal.  It's not like we're inventing a new genre.  It's more like we're teaching the publishing industry that we know how to turn out a great novel. 

We've looked at how to recognize, choose and structure theme, and how to tell theme apart from plot -- how to dissect out the independent variables within a completed novel.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-to-learn-to-use-theme-as-art.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/shifting-pov.html
And a vocabulary lesson on how I use the words "plot" and "story" to distinguish the moving parts of a novel or screenplay.

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

And here's one that has links leading back deeper into the posts on individual skills involved in crafting a plausible romance (for readers who don't believe that Happily Ever After is a point that real people in real life can achieve.)

Believing in Happily Ever After Part 4: Nesting Huge Themes Inside Each Other
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/10/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-4.html

Here are links to series of posts - they contain links to their previous parts. 

Here are links to 9 posts on "worldbuilding" -- a vast subject we aren't finished with yet (previous parts are linked in the last part).

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/10/worldbuilding-with-fire-and-ice-part-9.html

And here is a series about Theme-Worldbuilding integration:

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

These first 4 parts on theme-worldbuilding integration focus on the current issue of bullying in our society, especially among children, and what that means in terms of targeting a readership.

For writers working with paranormal elements, here's a post on the outer-reaches of the philosophical:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/05/theme-element-giving-and-receiving.html

And one specifically on the use of theme in Romance.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-to-use-theme-in-writing-romance.html

Assuming you have been following along through these posts, we're now ready to look at some of the raw material of our current society's unconscious philosophical assumptions which can easily be dissected into fallacies.  Discovering and revealing a logical fallacy (whether it is, or is not true!) in another person's thinking processes is one very powerful way to discombobulate and thus manipulate another person into doing or saying something they will later regret.

LATER REGRETS are the sum and substance of great romance -- once burned, twice wary.

Because our current culture is rooted in a plethora of fallacies, writers have a vast and rich array of materials to choose from, all of which lend themselves to the hottest romance plots.

Do you LOVE people who have a habit of pointing out dire errors in your thinking that undermine your conclusions?  Are you attracted to them?  Fatally, perhaps?

Do you come to trust someone who has proven you wrong on a number of occasions, so that when an emergency erupts you no longer trust your own instant assessment of what to do about it?

How many times do you have to be proven wrong before you become  convinced the prover is always right?  When do you surrender your personal sovereignty to another person's judgment?

Were you raised by parents who kept telling you that you had bad judgment and made bad choices?

Did you actually make any choices as a teen that you later regretted and came to understand as bad judgment? 

Or was your judgment sound, but your premise fallacious?  Do you trust your judgment now?

Are you a good judge of character? 

Did you pick the right Presidential Candidate based on sterling character traits?

Have you ever discovered a fallacy in your own reasoning? 

If you can't find an instance to relate to, just think back over all the TV commercials you've seen for products, and the money you've wasted on things that don't work as advertised.  That happens because you fail to see the fallacy in the commercial.

TV commercials are structured by a) LAWYERS (commercials can't ever say things that the company can be sued for -- they can lie, but the law allows lies) and b) MARKETERS who specialize in manipulating behavior of large groups.

To see what I'm saying here about legal-lies, read this post:
November 6, 2012  HOW TO WRITE LIAR DIALOGUE
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/11/dialogue-part-5-how-to-write-liar.html

To see what I'm talking about for MARKETERS see this post on the Overton Window phenomenon and marketing.  Even Presidential campaigns are now woven of the substance of this science.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/10/glenn-beck-didnt-invent-overton-window.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/01/failure-of-imagination-part-4-teasing.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/02/how-to-change-perception-of-romance.html

The creation of a popularizable "image" is often called "spin doctoring."  The creation of a character is a very similar procedure, alarming as that may seem.

These two disciplines combine to construct a funnel that sucks the customer's mind into a "world" they have "built" to house their fictional construct.

When it's done well, this technique can convince such a large percentage of viewers that some fallacious premise is true -- when it is not, and the authors of the commercial know it's not.

One such premise is that "cotton" is cooler to wear than artificial fibers.  The conviction that "science" shows it to be true has been driven so deep into the subconscious that people can verify this "fact" experimentally.  The subjective impression of coolness from cotton will conform to the assumption that it must be so.  Fact is, that "science" was commissioned by the cotton industry to prove that it's true because cotton was being driven from the market by competing fibers.

In our current culture, Science has become our "god."  Science is infallible (science says global warming is man-made so it's heresy to entertain the notion that this isn't yet proven).  Gods are infallible, and must be worshiped with out a doubt.  That need to worship something infallible is an inherent trait of human nature.  Read up on The Overton Window and all the science of Public Relations.

Here's a link to Wikipedia (incomplete article in need of fact-checking)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

-------------QUOTE--------------------------------
Edward Louis Bernays (November 22, 1891 – March 9, 1995) was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations".[1] He combined the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud.

He felt this manipulation was necessary in society, which he regarded as irrational and dangerous as a result of the 'herd instinct' that Trotter had described.[2] Adam Curtis's award-winning 2002 documentary for the BBC, The Century of the Self, pinpoints Bernays as the originator of modern public relations, and Bernays was named one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century by Life magazine.[3
---------------END QUOTE------------

Thus "Public Relations" is a field that grows out of one genius's deep rooted fear of the behavior of his fellow humans, and a terrible need to "control" that powerful and evil force called "humanity."

That is only one example of how active and powerful a well-driven fallacy can be in shaping subjective reality. 

But take a long view perspective on how Public Relations, Advertising, Spin Doctoring, and political campaigning tropes have shaped our current social reality, then take a long look at Bernays' life story.  You will see a real-world illustration of what I've been talking about in these posts -- the way the internal psychological circuitry of the main-character's mind projects that character's external reality, shapes his adversaries, and sets up the drama and its resolution. 

The writer must always create the Villain out of the substance of the Hero's internal conflict.  Or, you can do it the other way around, and create the Hero out of the Villain's inner problem.  However you go about doing it, the end product must show a match between the two of the story won't be plausible. 

One reason Romance as a genre has such a bad reputation is that Love is portrayed as "inexplicable."  It is inexplicable to the lovers!  But in a piece of fiction, it must be explicable if not explained. 

In a Romance, the two characters who fall in love are the "adversaries" or two poles of the conflict.  It's called "the battle of the sexes" for a reason, and all the "game" analogies also apply for that same reason -- the two are a pair, like Ahab and the Whale, or Bernays and The Public. 

Do that to a large enough group of people and they influence each other's solemn beliefs (the "herd instinct" referred to in that quote), and like "cotton is always the coolest fiber" popular beliefs become tangible reality.

Hence we have today's society composed of one "herd" that is absolutely convinced there is not and can never be such a thing as Happily Ever After and another herd (to which I belong) convinced that Happily Ever After is life's destination.

Here are some posts where we discussed and defined these two herds and how one individual reader can belong to either or both at any given moment.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/02/happily-ever-after.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/11/astrology-just-for-writers-part-11.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/02/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-5.html

Can a member of one herd join another?

I think so, but it's such a rare and improbable occurrence it makes a story!

In many instances in the above linked posts, I have noted that one reason the Romance genre is not given a lot of respect is that "Falling In Love" is always treated as an Emergency. 

Why would that concept be a source of scorn for Romance?

Here's the most often quoted instance of this concept in the media:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_said_never_let_a_good_emergency_go_to_waste

---------QUOTE--------------
 Rahm Israel Emanuel saying "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."
--------------END QUOTE------------

What exactly is being utilized in this principle?

The principle is the Overton Window -- which is the title of a novel by Glenn Beck about a PR firm and various characters involved in a PR project utilizing the concept Beck did not invent called The Overton Window.  An explanation of all that and what it has to do with learning to write is in this post which I mentioned above:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/10/glenn-beck-didnt-invent-overton-window.html

This principle of using emergencies to make people do things which are against a) their nature, b) their better judgment, c) their true Values, d) their religion or even e) are suicidal is a tool of the grifter, the confidence man, the scam artist.

It is a basic discovery at the root of the science of Public Relations or more accurately, Propaganda. 

It is a TRICK - a way of turning an adversaries strengths against them so they kill themselves and you don't have to get your hands dirty. 

That's why the genre's habit of portraying ROMANCE as an EMERGENCY -- "drop everything and pursue this one true love, and if that one true love gets away, life is over forever, so nothing you've dropped would ever be worth anything anyway" -- is viewed as a TRICK and instantly labeled as "impossible."  Why?  Because "emergencies" area always "tricks." 

Every other time in life's experience in the real world that people have dared to believe in Happily Ever After, it always turns out to be an instance of being fooled by a grifter.  So they don't believe it in fiction, and want nothing to do with such.

Why is Romance Genre singled out for scorn when all other fiction is even more unbelievable?

Romance Genre is special because everyone, in their heart of hearts, wants not just Romance, but entre into everlasting Love, solid and unbreakable Relationships, Family, enriched life.

Not only does everyone want it, everyone knows they are destined for it. 

Yet, time after time, in reality, they have had that promise of fulfillment snatched away.  The only possible psychological defense left is to believe staunchly that Happily Ever After is not possible.

Is Romance an Emergency?  When it happens, is it a life-or-death crisis in which one must drop everything and dash willy-nilly after the person who has evoked this vision of absolute fulfillment?

And if Romance is indeed an Emergency, then how should we treat it? 

How do we respond to Emergencies and Crises? 

Is there a malfunction in our society's training about how to respond to Emergencies and Crises?

Is our audience indoctrinated with some kind of fallacy that has warped our response to Emergencies? 

If so, what fallacy?  Where did it come from?  We, as writers, no doubt share that fallacy, so why bother to pinpoint it? 

The fallacy in our Emergency Response habits, if we can articulate it, can become our Theme, and the PINPOINTING of that fallacy  can become the plot of the breakout Romance that I've been talking about in this blog since I started looking for how Romance Genre can achieve the respect it deserves. 

We'll kick around some of these questions in Theme-Plot Integration: Part 2 Fallacy as Theme

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com