Crafting The Query Letter

On Google+ I've been in a discussion of how to cold-query an Agent when you have no sales record behind you -- and of course you can't sell fiction these days unless you have an agent, but you can't get an agent if you have no sales.

That's the same catch-22 you are in with the screenwriting biz when you start out. In fact, it's true of "getting your first job" no matter the industry.

You need to show-don't-tell what you have to offer that the person hiring you can make a PROFIT from.

The skepticism of those hiring anyone to do anything is growing because our educational system awards degrees and honors without actually equipping people to do the tasks necessary in commercial development of a product.

That's not really new, just exceptionally emphasized today. So we now have more "internships" where you work without pay, and social networking and blogging where you can gain a reputation and a following to prove you have commercial grade ideas and skills. Think of performing artists who've made a splash on YouTube.

So a while back, I did a series of 7 posts on WHAT IS AN EDITOR ending with how to tell if you're a writer or an editor. In the Screenwriting business, producers are usually your second or third tier editor.

Here's a link to the Part 7 post that has links to the previous 6 in the series:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-exactly-is-editing-part-vii-how-do.html

My series on EDITING puts your mind in the editor's place so you will KNOW what to include and what to exclude when writing a query.

Having considered what the agent and editor are up against these days, you then come upon the problem of how to query an agent who does not know "who" you are (if you are anybody at all.)

Here's what I wrote on this Google+ conversation about query writing:

Appropos of the business of agenting, I found this link on a Yahoo Group of professional writers, many best selling, big name pros who are self-publishing because the mainstream publishers (for whom they may still work) are offering really bad contract terms for the e-book and audiobook. Now the business of agenting is shifting hard and fast, with more cracks showing and chunks of the monolith breaking off. Here is a PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY post that is just a vague hint of what's under the surface. Read this looking for the emotional desperation those who've invested their career building years in AGENTING must be feeling.

Naggar Agency to Offer Reprint Rights Representation

Here's a quote from that article:
---------
While a number of literary agencies have announced plans to self-publish books by clients, others have taken the tack of offering ancillary publishing (and agenting) services. The Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency is taking the latter approach, and has launched a program to represent other agencies looking to republish their clients' backlist titles.

The new venture will be overseen by agent Jennifer Weltz, working with royalties manager Tara Hart. Speaking to this new side of the business, Weltz said it came about "organically" after she began talking to others in the industry about striking deals, with emerging e-book and POD publishers, for JVNLA's clients. Noting that there is a growing number of publishers eager to buy backlist works, Weltz said there is now a "middle world" between self-publishing and traditional publishing that remains unfamiliar to some in the business.
----------------

The agenting business is changing and shifting fast, along with publishing and writing. Reprints have become a goal in a way they haven't been for decades. If you're just starting out, keep this kind of shifting in mind as you sign contracts.

You also want to study this post which tells you what to write back once your query has been answered, "Send me ..."

http://editingcircle.blogspot.com/2010/03/ok-send-me-2-page-synopsis.html -- always remember you are opening a conversation, not ENDING one. Leave something for them to ask about.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Unto Zeor, Forever mentioned - LoveCats DownUnder: Rachel Needs Book Advice!

LoveCats DownUnder: Rachel Needs Book Advice!

I'm putting the link to this blog here because I keep losing track of it and it's a phenomenon and a half in a writer's life to see a book remembered exactly this way.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Dangerous Books For Girls Video Found Via Google+

Melissa Walsh pointed me to this video on Google+ and I need to save it and talk about it a lot on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com

Pilot for TV Series "House"

I found this via a screenwriting Group on Facebook Rockett Writer Group a "closed" Group you must request to join. It was posted by

Jessica-Trinity Fisher

House_1x01_- _Pilot.pdf (application/pdf Object)

I'm putting the link here because I've been watching House recently with that dissecting eye which produces my long, boring essays on writing craft.

Now if I had a parallel source of the ratings for each episode, and a spreadsheet of the changes made after ratings variances, maybe I could learn something about the decision making process that the decision makers themselves don't know.

Here's the parent website with links to a number of scripts posted online for free reading.

http://sites.google.com/site/tvwriting/home

It has series "bibles" and as of Dec 2011, here's a list of recent additions:

Latest Scripts

• Hell on Wheels 1x01 - Pilot
• Breaking Bad 3x01 - No Mas
• American Horror Story 1x01 - Pilot
• Happy Endings 1x02 - The Quicksand Girlfriend
• Happy Endings 1x04 - Mein Coming Out
• Hidden Episode 1
• Merlin 4x03 - The Wicked Day
• The Office 2x19 - Michaels Birthday
• Outnumbered 4x05
• Torchwood 4x01 - Miracle Day episode 1
• Last Man Standing 1x01 - Pilot
• Man Up! 1x01 - Pilot
• Grimm 1x01 - Pilot
• Once Upon A Time 1x01 - Pilot
• Beauty and the Beast 1x19 - Everything is Everything

Pendant Productions - Star Trek: Defiant MP3 and Podcast

Pendant Productions - Star Trek: Defiant MP3 and Podcast

As writers working toward a career in writing, you should seriously consider the market potential of RADIO DRAMA delivered via the internet.

There is an ever-growing number of such outlets.

Audio-only writing instills a story-discipline that will serve you well in a film career. If you combine that with a day-job in journalism, you train for the fast-paced, demanding, tailored-to-order world of Film Production (Hollywood or not, time is money is the prevailing adage.)

Journalism makes you fast and accurate with your words, and Radio Drama writing gives you drill in organizing a story.

In addition to this, I'd suggest you read the following e-book:



Those are short-stories from magazines published during the RADIO DRAMA ERA. Besides being interesting stories, and by the creator of the character ZORRO (one of my favorites), who also wrote for film, the underlying story-structure and thematic material are precisely relevant to today's web-based radio-drama world.

Put all that together, you will have a long and lucrative career.

But don't think it's easy money. This stuff is very hard work unless you're born with enormous talent.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Comment On Review Of Twilight Breaking Dawn

Take a good look at the following blog:

Twilight: Breaking Dawn. Why Do People Hate it So Much?

The author nails BREAKING DAWN and the whole Twilight thing both correctly and incorrectly.

a) correctly:
-----------quote-------------

From the very opening monologue it’s about some of the deepest things we have: what it takes to become an adult, and what falling in love can involve.

And it hits these concerns full centre, full power.

First of all it’s a neat dramatization of a Love dialectic. We get both versions. Classic romantic, an eternal truth (the vampires), and a more cynically deconstructed scientific notion of a gene-spreading imperative that deceives about its true nature (the imprinting of the werewolves).
---------end quote-----------

b) incorrectly:
----------quote-------------
Twilight asks How important is Love? How far would you go? Would you leave everything you value? Would you step into a dark unknown? Would you surrender to a far greater power? Would you dare to swap your soul for love of another? Would you? Would you really? And if you would, how incredible must the experience of that love be?

---and---

If you were a teenage girl wouldn’t you thrill to that idea?

Come on. Don’t be curmudgeonly. What’s wrong with making films for teenage girls? Don’t they deserve a bit of the magic too? Especially when it goes so deep into what makes us human.

Genuinely loved it. Can’t wait to see what happens next time.

Oh, and if you want to get into another animated debate here’s another post about Lord of the Rings wiping the floor with Harry Potter. There’s a pretty lively comments section…
---------end quote----------

The error here is the "teenage girl" limitation.  Yes, the publishers and film-makers probably narrowed the focus to make it blatantly "teenage girlish" -- but no, that's missing an important point.

Like my Sime~Gen series, both Potter and Twilight are accessible to readers/viewers first in the pre-adolescent and adolescent stages of development.  But human nature, the nature of the adult, is  not to erase all trace of childhood and adolescence and become something utterly new and irrelevant in adulthood.  "Adult" means the product of all experiences back to birth -- and maybe earlier!  Maybe including prior incarnations, who knows?

So works such as Potter, Twilight, or Warhorse, "speak" to every human being at every age or stage of life because they have something to say about "who" you could have become had you made other choices, and they address the entire issue of whether you made an optimal choice and what you choose to do next.

The rejection of your "teenage girl within" (even if you're male) is a major issue, and may have something to do with the rejection of the Happily Ever After ending we've been discussing at length and depth on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com in my Tuesday posts.

This labeling of TWILIGHT as "teenage girl" material smacks of the labeling of certain science fiction works as "fantasy" simply because they included themes arising from an exploration of human psychology -- examples are Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern (science fiction about a lost Earth colony) and Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels (science fiction about a lost Earth colony), Katherine Kurtz's Deryni novels, (science fiction about an alternate Earth).

Today C. J. Cherryh is still writing very successful novels in her Foreigner Series, but now that science fiction background is allowed to include that human dimension once forbidden.

So I expect that "teenage girl" dimension will be accepted as adult fare by general audiences just as the "fantasy" dimensions are becoming accepted today (even or especially on TV Series).



Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Why Not Send A PDF Of Your Script First?

You know that this blog focuses on writing craftsmanship-- but keep in mind that this isn't the "old fashioned" or "trad publisher" type of writing.

The world is changing as much as it did with the deployment of the moveable type printing press.  The writer's business model has collapsed, and is being rebuilt along new lines.

The search for a new publishing model is thrashing through new territory.  Everyone who's ever considering going into "business" is searching for "talent" to "exploit".

You hear it on blogs everywhere -- "content" we need "content" -- what is that?  WRITING TO BE EXPLOITED.

Writers need to "search" for material as frantically as business folk are searching for a biz model.

BREAKING DAWN and HARRY POTTER films -- the new Spielberg WARHORSE -- they're hitting huge markets with common-denominator material, "Primal" material such as Blake Snyder teaches you to exploit in SAVE THE CAT!  Each of those films is a "Save The Cat!" example.

I found an interesting post on a new Facebook Group I joined (which I found via another blog which I found on the right margin of a LinkedIn page which I was on because of a comment that a LinkedIn writer had made on an update to my LinkedIn status ... whew!  The comment was from a screenwriter, and the blog on LinkedIn was about screenwriting, which cited this facebook screenwriting group on LinkedIn .... that's why it's called social networking!)

http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2011/11/should-you-include-pdf-of-your-script.html

This is by a script "reader" (who makes a first judgement about projects) who is objecting to the amateurish over-eagerness of some writers attaching pdf files of an entire script to a mere first-query letter.

As you know, I watch the "Indie" markets -- film and publishing -- for what is being done with the new tools of this new world.  I'm aware of how much overflowing eagerness is driving young writers with a vision of what they could accomplish -- especially when these blockbuster films dangle vast sums of money before their eyes.

"I can do that, but I can do it "better"" they feel in every cell of their body.  Many, maybe most, are correct about that.  Nothing is being done to the fullest extent of the tools available (yet).

But when you have written the final scene of a story, you always feel it's the best thing that has been written ever -- (or sometimes the worst -- emotional "blow-off" is the state after finishing a draft).

The focus then shifts to either burying the thing in the backyard with a headstone, or trotting it out before the eyes of those who could get the film made, or the book published.

The "thebitterscriptreader" entry is about those writers who KNOW they've done something colossal, bigger than WARHORSE or POTTER, but either don't know what to do next, or don't know how to do it, or don't have the maturity to reign in their certainty and work through the next step.

What is that next step?

Well, this is depressing for some, but the next step is actually the FIRST step that should have been made on the project.  That's to articulate the CONCEPT in one line, develop it to a pitch, a paragraph, a page, 5 pages, synopsis.

If you develope a project from concept via those baby steps instead of leaping directly into writing the wondrous script, you can then tweak the statements in concept and pitch and construct your query letter/email.  And that query will indeed embody the essence of what you've written.

The reason people SEND that whole script when they should send only a query is that they don't know how to explain the driving essence, the true payload, the elegance, beauty and emotional PUNCH they have created in their script.  They can't "explain" it because it isn't clear.  It isn't clear because they wrote the project backwards, procedure wise.

How do I know this?  Been there, done that, got my head handed to me good and proper.  If you want the story, pick up a copy of UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER, or just peek "inside" on Amazon and read the introduction where I talk about how I learned.  ( find Unto on Amazon here
http://astore.amazon.com/simegen-20 )

Years and dozens of projects after you've learned to think "concept" first, then "market" then developing the pitch to take to market, then writing the story -- then you will be able to have an "idea" and just write it.  When you come to an "unclear" section or a wrong-step in your procedure, you'll go write up the "outline" or pitch or back cover copy, re-focus and know the next scene.

Here's one important secret.  The reason you want "thebitterscriptreader" to read your script is the reason you want to write that script -- which is the OPENING SCENE and FINAL SCENE connected by theme and illustrated by action and symbol.  In other words, it's the theme explicated into concrete images.

Everything else in your script has to be pared away -- don't weep, use it in another project, but get it out of the way of this project and focus this project on that one thing that will make this "bitter" reader grab it out of the avalanche of half-baked projects sluicing down at him seeing $$$$ all over it.

Just remember, if you have to attach the script, you've made a major error in writing it.

Here is the blog post on this blog about how to create that cover letter, the concept, and all the way up to the pitch that can sell the project, script unseen!
http://editingcircle.blogspot.com/2010/03/ok-send-me-2-page-synopsis.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Night Shade Books’ probation has been lifted

Night Shade Books’ probation has been lifted

That link goes to an article on the Science Fiction Writers of America website where it says the committee which placed Night Shade Books "on probation" for violating contracts with authors has now lifted the probation because all the issues have been properly dealt with.

This is a great example of why authors need to belong to an organization of authors that works diligently to protect rights. All authors, even those who do not belong to this or that organization, benefit from this behind the scenes work.

The SFWA workers are unpaid volunteers for the most part, though outside accountants and lawyers are often hired in these cases.

This kind of work never makes the headlines, but it is responsible for bringing good product to readers. If a writer doesn't get paid, she can't write the next book. It's a business, and publishers have to treat us as business runners.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Slice of SciFi TV – The Slice of SciFi Live Video Show!

Slice of SciFi TV – The Slice of SciFi Live Video Show!

That link leads to an adventure in web-TV focused on science fiction. This is a NEWS SHOW format show, pretty much like a video of a radio show broadcast, but featuring guests, and news clips.

See how to subscribe free to Farpoint Media podcasts on iTunes
http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/farpoint-media/id155949012
You have to consider this venture in conjunction with Glenn Beck's web-Tv venture GBTV http://web.gbtv.com/index.jsp?gclid=CK6Ks8yjjqsCFewaQgodSykvxA

Whatever you think of Beck's attitude and opinions, you have to hand it to his business sense. Books he backs consistently hit #1 best seller on the NYTimes list and on amazon.com

There's a business reason he's trying this web-TV basis, and he is not a ground breaker by nature. See this slice of SciFi TV venture and note what the Star Trek folks have been doing with webisodes.

If you're launching a screenwriting career, you need credentials in this kind of venue before it gets beyond your reach.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
http://astore.amazon.com/simegen-20 -- for list of currently available novels

Gender Gap Vanishes in Female-Empowered Cultures | Wired Science | Wired.com

Gender Gap Vanishes in Female-Empowered Cultures | Wired Science | Wired.com

Is an item on gender differences as a function of culture. This is just the kind of news item writers of fantasy must absorb and retool into worldbuilding.

Top Dating Sites » 10 Unrealistic but Common Romance Novel Storylines

Folks:

Here's a blog entry on 10 "unrealistic" Romance Novel Plots.

Top Dating Sites » 10 Unrealistic but Common Romance Novel Storylines

My entries on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com on Tuesdays are focused on the puzzle of why most people don't believe the HEA or Love Conquers All thesis of the Romance Genre.

There's much to discuss in this post, but it will reference many of the posts I've already done.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Zondervan Launches 'Story' Campaign with Lucado

Zondervan Launches 'Story' Campaign with Lucado

That headline leads to a blog post on Publisher's Weekly
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/47129-zondervan-launches-story-campaign-with-lucado.html?utm_source=Publishers+Weekly%27s+PW+Daily&utm_campaign=2b9449fdee-UA-15906914-1&utm_medium=email
about a 2005 publication called THE STORY which is a chronological retelling of The Bible.

Pastors and Churches picked this up and now it's generating more stories that are being published.

The popular writer teamed with church Pastors is stirring up the world.

I haven't read their THE STORY or dug deeply into this movement, but writers could learn something from it about how the new business model of publishing connects to existing communities or philosophical alliances.

There's a new social dynamic driving the entire "communications" component of life, all related to Social Networking.

A new writer just launching a career will not succeed at all without a thorough understanding of how all these new tools of communication link and inter-link.

Note Barak Obama won office by launching his campaign online, collecting money online. It probably worked because he was one of the first with the right skilled people to do that, and he had a message that resonated with the demographic that was involved in social networking.

The world has changed again, and yet again since then. Wednesday May 11, Newt Gingrich is to announce his online campaign for President via Facebook etc.

Tuesday May 10, 2011, my blog entry on http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com is about Mass Market writers providing their own (often best selling) titles for you via eBook publication - all formats.

What has all this to do with a group of Pastors supporting a chronological retelling of The Bible?

These are connecting trends that are re-enforcing themselves. The Internet shattered society as we know it. Now something new is forming, trying very much not to look too new.

THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT.

That's the Hollywood mantra for a reason. Think about that.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
http://astore.amazon.com/simegen-20

‘Game of Thrones’ Begins Sunday on HBO - Review - NYTimes.com

‘Game of Thrones’ Begins Sunday on HBO - Review - NYTimes.com

Is the kind of condescending review we would ordinarily expect for an SF Romance, and it's the attitude I've been dissecting and analyzing in http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com

I don't get HBO so it'll be a while until I see the TV version of George R. R. Martin's GAME OF THRONES, but I like Martin's writing (he's fun to do panels with, too).

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Kindle Author: Kindle Author Interview: Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Here is an interview where I detail the origin of my award winning Dushau Trilogy, and why it's now on Kindle.

Kindle Author: Kindle Author Interview: Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Kaye Manro Romance Author: Aliens ~ Soul Mates ~ and Sex

Kaye Manro Romance Author: Aliens ~ Soul Mates ~ and Sex This is a Guest post I did for this blog based on a previous Guest post (with a link to it). On #bookmarket chat on Twitter yesterday someone asked how to find really good blogs about BOOKS. Well, Kaye's is one, and you can find many more listed on the side of her blog page.

Writing Student Here Makes Good

Folks:

I have mentioned Kimber An's first novel being published because she's one of the most dedicated writing students reading my Tuesday posts on Aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com  -- here's the item.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/10/teens-trekkies-and-heroic-ideal_22.html

Now her second publication is coming out, and it's publication date is my birthday, March 25th!

Here's the message I just got from Kimber An
------------
Crushed Sugar, a prequel novella, by Kimber An will be released on March 25th. It is a short tale of a faint heart, a fair maiden, and a blood-sucking dead guy. Pop over to
http://www.facebook.com/l/a68cbJznbIxDOdZiWgMjHVl0R4Q/www.kimberan.com/aboutcrushedsugar to learn more!
.
Thanks again, Ladies! Couldn't have done it without you, especially Jacqueline, who taught me so much. If you haven't already, the rest of yous should pop over to her page.

-------------

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

On Genre - A Lucrative Topic

Folks:

I've been writing long series of long posts on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com about how we, as Science Fiction Romance writers, can bring Romance and its cross-sub-genres Paranormal and SF, into the high level of respect among the general public that we think it deserves.

This is a topic Science Fiction fans and writers spend a lot of time on.

Here is an article for you to ponder as you decide how to launch your own career.
One Genre to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them --

Remember bylines become associated with genre, so you may need several bylines in genres to make a living, and another one to gain prestige, if that's what you want. But if you do that, there will come a day when you have to pretend to disparage your genre books, or pretend they aren't yours.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Using Twitter and Klout

To get a grip on "why" the @twittername mention is important in a RT, go sign up (free) for klout.com  --

Or just look at my name there http://klout.com/JLichtenberg  (I made 57 once)

Klout.com is a "service" that rates "reach" (i.e. how important you are on the internet) via twitter responses and it accesses some other social network activity metrics too.

The number klout.com comes up with is used by search engines to suggest you as the answer to various questions, (or at least it was last I looked).  There's a whole lot of reasons why your klout number is the key to selling books.

There are probably other such services out there -- but your Klout number comes up on hootsuite.com window when you click on the @person name on a tweet.

It's all about "who" you are to "the world" -- as writers, we gather followings.  I think most of us have READERS following us, and "readers" as a group tend to be more "influential" in the world -- so if we team up and RT each other, expanding the "klout" "reach" we each have, we can become the answer to search engine questions, and sell books.

Roundabout, but it's not much effort to put an @person in a tweet if you use hootsuite -- it auto-completes the @ if you remember the first couple letters.

Twitter itself is not much use for anything.  To "work it" you need "tools" -- Tweetdeck and Hootsuite seem to be emerging as top favorites of those serious about mastering social networking. (try free versions)

Jacqueline Lichtenberg (freebie enthusiast)
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Folks:

I belong to a group of mass market writers who have posted their own backlist as e-books. I've posted my award winning Dushau trilogy to Kindle, but Wildside's Borgo imprint is doing my Sime~Gen novels, and already has Molt Brother and City of a Million legends on Kindle and other e-book formats.

Over 70 authors belong to this Group - called Backlist Ebooks. Here are a few who have blogs you can learn from.

Gerald M Weinberg - http://secretsofconsulting.blogspot.com/ (http://www.geraldmweinberg.com )

Doranna Durgin, http://doranna.net/wordplay

Marsha Canham, http://marshacanham.wordpress.com

Jacqueline Lichtenberg, http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com
(where I post on Tuesdays)

Jeffrey A. Carver, http://starrigger.blogspot.com/

Jill Metcalf, http://jillmetcalf.wordpress.com

Terry Odell, http://terryodell.blogspot.com

Maryann Miller, http://its-not-all-gravy.blogspot.com/

Patricia Rice, http://patriciarice.blogspot.com

Pati Nagle, http://patinagle.livejournal.com/

Lorraine Bartlett or Lorna Barrett, http://www.LornaBarrett.blogspot.com

Karen Ranney, http://karenranney.wordpress.com 


Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com (slowly being updated with NEW Sime~Gen releases)

Script page from White Collar (a real one)

I found this posted on Twitter by Jeff Eastin via twitpix



Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Thrills, Chills and Romance

Thrills, Chills and Romance

This blog entry by Nancy Holzner, I found on a twitter post Retweet by Nancy Holzner.

On a #scifichat on twitter I got into convo about "what is genre" (which I think is changing) so this is relevant to a blog I have to write on genre definitions (thought I was done with that, but there's more to say).

So on http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com I'll probably discuss this post. Meanwhile read it, read Holzner's novels (good reads all) and really think about what's actually happening here.

I suspect those discussing "genre" are not exactly phrasing the questions in a way that can produce answers that writers (inside the writer's own mind) can use to sort their creative material into forms that fit marketing channels.

So at some time soon, I'll have to revisit the "what is science fiction" topic which we all thought was totally finished decades ago.

Science Fiction is "what I like to read" -- and that is the only definition SF fans ever agreed on!

But that's not a definition writers, editors, publishers or producers can use to generate what you like.

If you're trying to write a commercially existing genre, or trying to invent a totally new one -- and be a "market maker" -- some original thinking is in order for 2011.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Save the Cat!®

http://www.blakesnyder.com/2010/11/19/kristan-higgins-on-the-spark-of-the-divine/

Save the Cat!® Kristan Higgins is a USA Today bestselling author and two-time winner of the Romance Writers of America RITA Award… the Oscar® of the romance industry. She is the author of six romantic comedies, is under contract for three more, and has been called “one of the most honest and creative voices in contemporary romance.”

This is a blog to follow, but this Guest Blogger is someone to pay attention to.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Can you outgrow YA category fiction?

http://enduringromance.blogspot.com/2010/11/jacqueline-lichtenberg-on-ya-category.html is a guest post I did for Kimberan who has her first novel, Sugar Rush out now, with more to come.

KimberAn comments regularly on the posts I do at aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com mostly on fiction craft.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Kelly: Why ‘The Flintstones’ is evil (and happy birthday) - thestar.com

Kelly: Why ‘The Flintstones’ is evil (and happy birthday) - thestar.com

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/867804--kelly-why-the-flintstones-is-evil

I found this via twitter.

TheLiveFeed James Hibberd

Why Flintstones was evil http://bit.ly/97Yd49

ATTENTION WRITERS - here's how to sell a TV Series if you can understand what this article means.

This article is a very elegant, BRIEF, analysis with bullet points of the formula for THE FLINTSTONES episodes and the effect that formula may have had on a generation at a susceptible age. OK, it comes wrapped in opinion, but if you unwrap it, you'll find what you need to build your own cultural icon.

There are a lot of comments to think about, too. The whole issue of the cause-effect relationship between fiction and "real life" has not been completely defined and described yet. Here's your chance to show-don't-tell what that relationship is to you, and what it means to your generation.

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT: Create a set of 8 bullet points illustrating the philosophical issues your show tackles in each episode. Note that 7th-minute formula "beat" -- lay out your show's BEATS.

This article discusses the FLINTSTONES that was a TV cartoon -- today's market is for animated webcast cartoons cut into smaller segments. Create one using this breakdown of FLINTSTONES.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Behind the Scenes: Backlist Ebooks

WordPlay » Blog Archive » Behind the Scenes: Backlist Ebooks

That is a link to a blog entry explaining a group that C. J. Cherryh pointed me to on facebook.

Writers with out of print backlist titles can get a publisher to do the ebook (as I've done with Wildside Press for Molt Brother and City of a Million Legends) -- or they can put the ebook version on Kindle or smashwords or several other places and get a larger percentage as I've done with Dushau, Farfetch, Outreach and the two Daniel R. Kerns titles in omnibus HERO AND BORDER DISPUTE.

I've been invited to write a blog entry for http://madgeniusclub.blogspot.com/ and I'll talk a little about the ebook revolution and this group.

This is all about the business of writing.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Writer Beware® Blogs!: Assertions and Statistics

Writer Beware® Blogs!: Assertions and Statistics Is a WRITERS BEWARE blog post by Victoria Strauss (look up her credentials and be boggled follow her on twitter at http://twitter.com/victoriastrauss )

This and the linked blog posts within it should be read and carefully absorbed by anyone who doesn't know the publishing industry from the inside and wishes to become a "published" author.

Keep in mind "publishers" really are "investors" just like "producers" who make films, and the writer is the stock they invest in.

There Are No Rules - How One Author Is Using Scribd to Find Readers

And another method of e-publishing I haven't paid any attention to is scribd.com which I really don't understand yet.

Is there anyone here who reads or buys from scribd.com?

There Are No Rules - How One Author Is Using Scribd to Find Readers

Girl Gone Wylde - Jacqueline Lichtenberg on What Exactly is Editing

Girl Gone Wylde - Jacqueline Lichtenberg on What Exactly is Editing

Is a blog entry mentioning my 7 part series on WHAT EXACTLY IS EDITING which culminates in how to decide if you are an editor or a writer (not as obvious as it sounds).

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/08/what-exactly-is-editing-part-iii.html

7.15.10: A Medley of eBook News : Sacramento Book Review

7.15.10: A Medley of eBook News : Sacramento Book Review That's a blog about the massive shift toward e-books coincident with launch of Kindle and competitive readers. You have to keep up with the technology to keep up with the field of publishing.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com (current Kindle and fictionwise novels)

alien romances: Presidential Politics Alien Style

alien romances: Presidential Politics Alien Style

That's an older post that goes with the two recent posts I've done on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com on the way a writer's imagination can fail and what to do about it.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/06/where-expert-romance-writers-fail.html
and
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/07/failure-of-imagination-part-ii-society.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Happy Hunting Ground for Eclectic Readers

I'm seeing a trend in the world at large, using social networking.

I've been talking about that a lot on http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com but here's a new twist or wrinkle.

goodreads.com gathers readers who talk to each other about good books - and they form Groups specializing in various genres.

Authors participate as well, talking not just to their own readers but readers of other authors and other genres. But more than that, they listen to readers. They're readers themselves or likely wouldn't spend much time on goodreads.com

There are several social networks specializing in book readers, including Amazon's own communities. This is happening worldwide - readers uniting, leaving traditional publishers somewhat bewildered.

The online fan fiction networks are likewise growing. See fanfiction.net but prepare to be mind-boggled. These are writers in training building the followings that publishers are beginning to require as a pre-requisite to reading a manuscript.

Out of this fermenting stew of readers and writers is rising a body of work that is breaking new ground and I think changing the publishing landscape.

I found these 2 Lists on Amazon with a real grab-bag of different titles, and even see a couple I want to review.

Breakout Books by Independently-Published Authors

And

Rise of the Indie Author | Standout Self-Published Novels

These are authors who are accessible, participate in goodreads.com and really listen to readers. Read their novels and tell them what you would want to see next - and you may find they are more responsive than anyone working in mass market.

In fact, some of these authors are working in mass market -- and are responsive to readers anyway.

Expand your horizons.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

What You Can Do In A Novel That You Can't Do In A Movie

The explanation in the post below of the inside under-structure of THEME and how to create the thematic structure of a novel to support different novel lengths first appeared at:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-you-can-do-in-novel-that-you-cant.html

And it came right before the previous post here on Editing Circle:
http://editingcircle.blogspot.com/2010/05/how-to-learn-to-use-theme-as-art.html
which was originally posted on aliendjinnromances as well

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

These two posts on theme should be studied together.

Writing teachers, and professionals who read a beginner's manuscript, will always center in on the beginner's failure to frame the conflict, failure to start the story in the right place, failure to plot through to the natural ending, failure to choose the correct main point of view or protagonist, failure in worldbuilding, failure in information-feed (telling not showing; telling at the wrong time in the story), failure to develop characters (very seldom mentioning failure to develop Relationship unless it's a Romance), and failure to use dialogue correctly. If the teacher can't figure out what's wrong, they'll center on spelling, punctuation and grammar, paragraph structure and page layout.

I have taught many writing workshops in tandem with many very famous writers, and many editors who really know what they're doing. I've never seen anyone explain to a beginner why any or all of the above failures happen or what to do to train the imagination away from stampeding the writer into those failures.

The explanation and cure is very simple. The list of failures above is not a list of failures. It's one (and only one) total failure.

THEME STRUCTURE

And with that, the theme-art integration issue.

Once those two are mastered, it becomes very easy, inevitable, that a natural progression to theme-character integration, theme-plot integration, theme-story integration, and theme-dialogue integration will just happen inside the writer's subconscious. Given all that smooth integration, one quick lesson in scene structure,

http://editingcircle.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-tricks-of-scene-structure.html

and another in stringing scenes together (avoiding walking characters through intermediate activities that don't advance the plot -- I just read a mass market paperback I'm not going to review because it had that flaw all the way through, but I haven't yet written a post on detecting that flaw in your first draft), and if you have those skills, then plot-story integration just falls into place.

If you can write a literate sentence and structure a lean plot with vivid characters learning life's thematic lessons, you will start to sell, and the marketplace will teach you everything else.

There is no "right way" to write, no secret method that all professionals use to accomplish all this complicated abstract stuff all at the same time.

But there is a way to train your subconscious to do it for you, and that way works for most people, just as driving instruction works for most people (at least in terms of controlling an automobile, if not in terms of choosing where to go and what to do when you get there).

The ugly truth is that a lot of people are just born knowing and doing these fancy, abstract sounding things inside their minds. They have talent. The rest of us have to suffer through training and practice.

See KimberAn's comment on How To Learn Theme As Art
http://editingcircle.blogspot.com/2010/05/how-to-learn-to-use-theme-as-art.html

She's just noticed the results of this training. Note the date on my original posting - 2008. KimberAn has been working through my writing lessons for more than 2 years, and is reaping rewards as her subconscious has become trained to sort a story out into components before synthesizing it into commercial format and presenting it to her as a writing job.

She had about 85% of this craft down pat before she started reading my posts, but as individual, separate things. Now she's discovered that somewhere back there she made a major breakthrough into the realm of the commercial fiction craft, and her subconscious is synthesizing and sorting for her. This will eliminate a lot of rewriting!

Now study what helped her.

-------------------

Novels, especially long ones, can draw a reader into complexities, depths, abstractions, theory of life, the universe, and everything -- with a variegated texture impossible to duplicate in a motion picture. Novels can argue for and against several propositions at the same time. Films -- because of the nature of how the human brain assimilates information -- simply can't do that.

In addition, today's viewers are conditioned to bits that can be sandwiched between commercials. Many young people who do not read printed text at all prefer to spend their entertainment hours watching short videos on YouTube or comic/animation websites, stories broken into webisodes.

At theaters, the management offers popcorn refills you can go get in the middle of the movie.

People can't sit still for more than an hour these days. And most 20-somethings are so conditioned to the 40 minute class or TV show that they see nothing wrong with their disability. They think it's normal to be unable to sit still for three hours. They think it an unusual imposition, an irrational demand, to pay attention to one thing and one thing only for three hours. (hence many workplaces now allow texting and surfing while at the work-desk)

And the same is true of reading novels. Though some fantasy genres are able to sell very thick novels (about 600 printed pages), most books have become shorter. And if they're not shorter, they are more "thinly" plotted, structured like movies.

People live their lives and imbibe their fiction in sound-bytes and 5-minute YouTube videos. To understand, comprehend, and grok a really complex theme, the reader must be able to remember what happened on page 20 by the time they get to page 620. Modern life does not foster this ability.

Books on how to write novels don't even explain how to construct a long, long novel that isn't over-written, fat, wandering, shapeless and boring with a sag in the middle.

So I was delighted when a student writer asked me (and then reminded me) to explain the structure of very long novels, with emphasis on how to structure a novel for 3 viewpoint characters, even if they're all protagonists.

It's really very simple to do, but infernally difficult to explain.

In order to understand how to craft such a long novel that doesn't sag in the middle or peter out at the end, you have to have a firm grasp of the basics of structure that I've discussed previously.

Protagonist, antagonist, conflict, beginning, middle, end, and THEME.

And the most important structural component in a long piece is THEME.

A short story (under 7,500 words) can have one theme, and only ONE. It must be something very clear, starkly simple, mostly concrete -- something you can say in 3 to 10 words. "Life is Just A Bowl Of Cherries" -- "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" -- a bumper sticker.

A novelette (to 17,500 words) can have a DOMINANT THEME and 1 SUB-THEME (and only one).

A novella (17,500 to 40,000) can have a DOMINANT THEME and 2 SUB-THEMES (only 2).

A NOVEL (40,000 words and up) (up to any length) can (but doesn't have to have) a DOMINANT THEME and UP TO 3 SUB-THEMES and no more than 3.

I did not make this up. I learned it in the Famous Writer's Course (a correspondence course on how to write fiction which I completed in the 1970's).

I've been a professional reviewer since the 1980's and a paid reviewer for The Monthly Aspectarian since 1993. I've read a lot of books in addition to the books I read just because I want to. I have NEVER seen this above paradigm of thematic relationships successfully violated.

If you want to see how it works in practice, read the early draft of my Sime~Gen Novel, UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER which is titled SIME SURGEON and posted for free reading at
http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/surgeon/SURGEON1.html Then read UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER (which had a HC edition and a paperback edition so you might find a copy somewhere).

The difference is the thematic structure paradigm strictly enforced, rigidly applied -- because my editor at Doubleday insisted or no publication. Her favorite mantra "It isn't clear" -- comes from how she searches for that thematic structure and the inner relationships between the sub-themes. But she, like most writers, does that subconsciously.

Marion Zimmer Bradley was a seat-of-the-pants writer who let her subconscious work out of conscious sight. Don't ask a centipede how it walks! If you don't naturally think in terms of THEME on first draft, don't try to "learn" how.

It is not a thing that can be learned. However, if you do work thematically naturally, but are untrained in how to do it -- you can learn to perfect your performance. (Remember: Writing Is A Performing Art).

It doesn't matter how you get to the final, finished product -- only that you do get there. So if you must write a very long novel and don't work with theme in your outline stage -- you will just have to rewrite.

A 2 hour movie uses up the material that would fit somewhere between a short story and a novelette. At the very most about 20,000 words of narrative text makes a 110 page film script.

A long running TV series like the 20 years of GUNSMOKE would be a series of novels. A miniseries like THE WHEELERS, can be a series of big fat novels shrunk to the small screen.

So if you're structuring a novel that you hope one day will become a motion picture, try to stay with one, single, monotone, theme.

If you can't construct a novel that will come out to about 40,000 to 80,000 words with one single dominant and clear theme -- then you really won't be able to do the longer forms.

If you attempt the longer form without the primary skills, you will end up with furious, emergency rewrites to order from an editor who has no idea what you really meant -- because you didn't make it clear.

If you write using THEME to structure your work, you will be able (with practice) to write and sell a second or at most 3rd draft of a 160,000 word novel.

If your subconscious is well trained in doing this thematic work, you may be able to do that without actually knowing that you're doing it. Then only minor rewriting will be necessary.

Whether you do it consciously or unconsciously, your finished product must fit this paradigm in order to succeed as a story. If it doesn't fit -- you might sell it; you might get it through editorial with minor hassles; you might even excite a lot of readers. But you won't find your novel still on the shelves years later, and you won't have a drawer full of respectable reviews that you are proud of.

In order for bloggers to talk about your book -- they need to have an idea of what your book says. And what your book says is your THEME.

If you can't find the themes of the novels you read, you need to practice until you can. Some people learn by example, so here's an example from my blog last week.

Michelle West's THE HIDDEN CITY -- is a tour de force of thematic clarity and complexity.

As should be the case, the title is the theme. This novel is about the hiddenness of entire communities.

The novel follows two points of view until well into the story where the universe has been clearly laid out -- then bits of other points of view are woven cleanly into the text.

There are 2 major point of view characters, protagonists both. But they have a conflict between them -- that resides HIDDEN within each. Their relationship gradually reveals what is hidden inside them as they gather other people about themselves -- each of which has something hidden inside that they must learn about. The reader learns what is hidden, and some of it is revealed to the character who is hiding it -- but not to the other character.

These are not "secrets" -- these are things that exist but the character is not aware of their own subconscious issues until events and relationships reveal them later in the book. They can then become "secrets" -- a thing which is known but deliberately withheld.

The setting is a city built over the remains of an ancient ruin -- which only the protagonists know how to enter. Below their normal reality lies a HIDDEN CITY.

So the physical setting explicates the psychological theme.

Then the antagonists as they are introduced through offstage action (hidden from view at first) turn out to be something very different from what they appear to be on the surface.

When the protags and antags finally come to a gigantic confrontation, much is revealed -- only to lead to more questions about what may yet be hidden from view.

One point of view character is a magic-user -- and the "hidden" and also "secret" nature of magical power is thematically discussed through her.

So the setting is HIDDEN, the characters have inner traits hidden from themselves, they hide things from each other, and the final action is triggered by lessons in impersonating those above or beneath your station in life and thus finding things within yourself that have been hidden from your consciousness.

Everything in the novel relates to that theme of HIDDEN.

HIDDEN is the DOMINANT THEME and it pervades everything in the novel, every description (even the various places they live).

There are 3 sub-themes. A sub-theme is another statement about the broader, more abstract or philosophical Dominant Theme.

The dominant theme DOMINATES the other 3. These are not 4 separate statements about the nature of reality. You can't find a set of 4 themes to write a novel about by randomly choosing philosophical statements from a book of quotations, your personal cardfile of story ideas, or just by picking a thought that occurs to you as "neat!"

These are an AXIOM and 3 POSTULATES derived from that axiom and proved by it. Think Boolean Algebra. Think Tetragrammaton. PROVED by it -- shown not told. Dramatized truths.

One of the sub-themes in THE HIDDEN CITY is virginity. One character is a sexual virgin and a virgin in the sense that she's never killed a human being. Another character is neither kind of virgin -- BUT is a virgin in the sense that she has never had a family that cared about her.

The process of losing virginity is the process of REVEALING the adult hidden within the child. It was there all the time; you just weren't aware of it.

Two of the characters are so traumatized that they don't speak aloud -- so they invent a secret language of gestures. That serves a vital plot point at the ending. Nothing that is established is there just to explicate the theme -- everything must figure in the plot or it gets cut. Ruthlessly cut. (save it for the website) This very long novel is actually sparsely written -- there is not one word that should be cut. There is no decoration. Nothing is there simply because it's interesting. Every word is functional.

One of the characters makes a living (and gets embroiled in all this trouble) by exhuming archaeological treasures from the city beneath the city, treasures the antagonists are after for magical reasons. Reasons of POWER.

They are all abandoned by family, bereft, orphans all in different ways. Alone, they forge bonds of family among themselves and become a community in search of safety in the shadows.

The Dominant Theme pervades, but each sub-theme illuminates or discusses the dominant theme.

So we have
1. HIDDEN COMMUNITIES
a) virginity hides the adult
b) archeology reveals the past
c) languages conceal and reveal magical power

And it's all done in show don't tell.

That's why I spent all of last week's blog entry raving about this book. I had picked up and discarded 3 huge novels and was feeling as though nothing good was being published this month -- and then I found this and couldn't put it down.

If you can't tell what a book is about by the bottom of page 1, it is not going to be a good book. I know. I've read a lot of books, turning pages and hoping.

What the story is about is the THEME. In a film, you should know within 2 minutes what the film is about -- and by the 5th minute (page 5 of the script) the theme will be stated, even if obliquely.

The first theme you introduce in a novel and lay out in dramatized detail is your DOMINANT THEME. Don't touch the sub-themes until chapter 2 or even chapter 5. Make sure your dominant theme is clear before you start discussing it.

If a reader doesn't want to read a book about your dominant theme's philosophy, you don't WANT them paying money for your book because they'll only go on amazon and write a scathing review dissing your book! Don't sucker the reader. Respect the reader. Tell them what you're talking about right on page one (but not in so many words).

Take the first line of Marion Zimmer Bradley's first version THE SWORD OF ALDONES. We were outstripping the night. The whole novel is about running away from metaphorical "darkness" -- evil, power let loose, subconscious guilts for letting power loose. The key confrontation that turns Regis Hastur's hair white is at NIGHT.

Take the opening image from her runner up for the Hugo, THE HASTUR GIFT. The riding party crests a ridge and looks down on the valley of Thendara -- the Comyn Tower across the town from the Terranan Tower at the space port. The book's main conflict is Magic vs. Technology and the THEME is the far reaching consequences of the knowledge of both (i.e. LOOKING DOWN -- seeing the pattern from above). Those who know must lead, even where none follow.

So, how do you take an idea that's been throbbing in your mind for years and turn it into a large novel that has this structure?

First you practice writing the single 75,000 word novel until you can do it in your sleep -- protagonist, antagonist, conflict, beginning, middle, end, THEME.

The large novel with 3 protagonists is just 3 of these novels, and it's not quite 3 times as long because you don't have to repeat the background.

Each of the sub-themes is the story of ONE protagonist - antagonist pair.

And they are bound together by the dominant theme, which is the one thing you really want to say about "life, the universe, and everything" -- with this novel. Each protagonist's story explicates and illuminates that one dominant theme.

So you have a "Star" and 3 "Co-Stars" or Supporting Actors. The co-stars must have lives, backstories, personal quirks and "buttons," internal conflicts and enemies which show-don't-tell the arguments for and against the thesis that forms the Dominant Theme.

A long, complex novel is an argument about the topic -- showing all sides of the issue, from different points of view. And eventually, the writer must "end" the novel with a conclusion to the argument -- but with a long novel where all sides of the issue have been thoroughly illustrated and discussed, the ending can be equivocal from the reader's point of view -- but the characters must come to a conclusion they intend to live with. In a sequel, that conclusion can be blasted to pieces -- but for the reader to be satisfied with the novel, the main characters must find some kind of peace on the main issue.

Take Classic Star Trek. It's classic because it's structured exactly this way with a Dominant Theme "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and two prominent sub-themes "Logic demands curiosity" and "Emotional health demands security".

Kirk - "Follow me!" (into the unknown for the sheer fun of it)
Spock - "Unknown, Captain" (therefore something to be pursued, solved, discovered)
McCoy - "I don't want my molecules scrambled - " (exploration isn't worth the risk)

Kirk, Spock and McCoy are 3 protagonists. Scotty, Uhura, Chekov, etc are SUPPORTING characters.

Now "who" are Kirk, Spock and McCoy? I learned from Gene Roddenberry while interviewing him for Star Trek Lives! that he always saw Kirk, Spock and McCoy as 3 parts of himself.

In other words, the 3 added up to ONE PERSON -- one whole, fully dimensional person.

So how do you write a novel with 3 protagonists so that the 3 themes are all sub-themes of the same dominant theme?

You start with ONE character -- one fully dimensional, whole, complete personality. Then you factor that personality into 3 parts.

Roddenberry used to say that Kirk, Spock and McCoy were himself in different moods.

So try that. Take one character you fully understand and plunge him/her into different moods. Or give them different backgrounds, upbringing, advantages and disadvantages - the same basic person actualized and realized by different challenges. Or in different incarnations.

The trick here is to do the exact opposite of what a reader does.

The READER sees 3 different characters and plunges into the story to find out how they RELATE to each other -- how they are parts of a whole.

The WRITER does the opposite. The writer sees 1 single whole character and plunges into the story to discover how that character manifests as 2 or 3 people.

Remember the protagonist and antagonist are reflections of each other. They are bound together into conflict by a single theme.

So each of the 3 protagonists has a theme (sub-theme to the whole novel) and a personal antagonist bound in a conflict which must be resolved by the end of the novel.

The first conflict to be introduced must be the last conflict to be resolved. See Marion Zimmer Bradley's CATCH TRAP. I watched her struggle with that ending word by word, event by event. It taught me how that structure must go, and how to take an imagined story and craft it into the structure. It means changing things that to you, as a writer, are so real that you scream, "No, that's not the way it HAPPENED!" But that's what it takes to craft a great novel which is a work of art, a work of a Performing Art.

In a work of art, every single element is a "reflection" of other elements.

You take one whole thing and display it in different versions, different lighting, different moods, different circumstances. To "perform" a long novel, the one thing you take (your raw material, your clay or paint or sounds) is your Dominant Theme.

Theme works this way in music too. Study how musical chords are constructed. Long novels are constructed just exactly that way -- around a group of themes that are related philosophically like the notes in a chord played in a key.

Ever heard of "keynote" -- and by extension "keynote address?" Think of your long novel as a convention and your dominant theme as the keynote address. Or the typical ending of a speech, "On that note, let me present to you -- "

Themes get their unity by starting out as one thing -- and then being factored into a series of related things. Poetry works the same way as a long novel -- no matter how long or short the poem, all the parts are about that one single idea, concept, notion.

It is that underlying unity of theme -- the ultimate pervasiveness of the dominant theme -- that gives your built universe verisimilitude -- that makes it seem real, possible, plausible enough for people to walk into it with you.

And in a longer work, what keeps the reader picking the book up every night rather than watching TV, is the precise relationship between the Dominant Theme and the Sub-themes -- how they argue the point of whether the thematic statement is true or not -- how the sub-themes prove the point (not whether they prove the dominant theme's point, because they must prove it, but HOW it happens!).

That's where the kind of suspense comes from that lasts after the book is put down -- and a longer work has to be constructed to be put down. Everyone has to pee sometime!

The reader wants to know HOW these characters will come to understand the truth of the dominant theme, while being reassured that they will come to that understanding. If the characters don't come to understand it - the reader will be disappointed. Failing to produce that understanding is the writer's cop-out, not a surprising "twist."

Having stated your dominant theme at the opening, drawn a clear picture, then introduced the sub-themes to argue, challenge and ultimately illuminate and support the dominant theme, you must (at the resolution of the conflict; as near the climax as possible) make it clear that the characters finally understand that Grand Truth represented by the dominant theme.

And you're taking a big chance when you do this. Half the readership will disagree with your idea of Grand Truth, Transcendental Truth, Self-Evident Truth. And they won't want to read your book because it's drivel.

The trick is to make your drivel so crystal clear, your statement of the nature of reality so penetrating and powerful, that it will be fun for your detractors to read so they can argue against your point.

In order to get people arguing against your point, you must MAKE YOUR POINT -- clearly. And that means you must use this thematic structure.

Once you get them arguing, though, your name will be all over the bloggosphere and amazon won't be able to keep your novel in stock.

You have to goose people into arguing the truth which is your Dominant Theme's statement.

I've given you two examples, THE HIDDEN CITY and STAR TREK. OK, let's do an exercise because you have to practice this to get it. But as I said, it's really easy to do if you've learned all the previous techniques we've discussed and have explored enough different philosophies to have something to say.

So let's create a dominant theme and 3 sub-themes.

Try this one:

THE GAVEL FALLS

a) Deadlines
b) Decisions
c) Ceremony, Formality

Take that and create 3 or 4 characters to illustrate the arguments.

a) Deadlines -- the character is a college student whose HS teachers always gave him extensions when he missed the deadline for an assignment. Now he's editor of the college newspaper (brilliant guy - think Barak Obama with time-management issues). It doesn't come out on time. The students impeach him.

b) Decisions: The College Dean advisor to the Newspaper must decide what to do about this kid who doesn't beleive in deadlines but is a brilliant newspaper editor.

c) Graduation -- The Valedictorian who wins his/her position over the Newspaper Editor. Maybe this is the Student Body President -- or a Football Star. The Newspaper Editor doesn't get his diploma at the graduation but the character who understands formality and ceremony does - and lands a great job, too.

OK, that was a quick, off the cuff exercise. If I were really going to write this theme set, it wouldn't be a college campus story.

Here's what to do to teach yourself to do this.

1) do this much of an outline (a, b, c, above) for 5 different stories, different settings, that could be titled THE GAVEL FALLS. Extend a, b, and c to be complete thematic statements such as -- "deadlines are for dodos" -- "decisions should always be hedged, CYA" -- "Ceremony doesn't count" Use your own variants -- push your imagination to find off-the-wall statements about these subjects.

2) create 5 more theme-sets and run the same exercise for each of the 5.

You can quit as soon as it becomes so easy, it's boring.

The drill is the point here, not "learning" but "practice." The better you condition your subconscious to think in theme-sets like this, the easier it will be when you sit down to write a long novel. Your subconscious will do all this work for you before telling you that you have an idea for a long novel.

Just remember a long novel is not a movie. To make it into one, a screenwriter will choose one of the sub-themes, make it dominant, then change it to be a statement the chosen audience for the movie will either agree with or violently disagree with. This could become the inverse of your own personal philosophy of life. (note what happened to Ursula LeGuin when Earthsea was made into a TV miniseries). When the theme changes, the characters change characteristics.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://www.slantedconcept.com

How To Learn To Use Theme As Art

How To Learn To Use Theme As Art was originally posted here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-to-learn-to-use-theme-as-art.html 

Believe it or not, the way to learn to use theme as art is to practice meticulous worldbuilding.

What is meticulous worldbuilding? It doesn't necessarily have to be done consciously. You can program your subconscious to create universes around your characters, to wrap the background around the character in such a way that it makes logical sense that this character would do this thing at this time in the character's life -- and that the blowback from the action it would cause the character to learn an important lesson and change because of it.

But how do you do that? How do you train your subconscious to create universes that "work" in fiction, worlds that are "meticulously" built?

Beginners and amateurs (and outsiders from the writing profession) believe that whatever is going on in their own imaginations constitutes a story, a novel, a movie. They believe what they dream, imagine, wish, hope for, or dread is Art and is an "idea for a story."

Nothing could be farther from the truth -- and still be exactly, precisely, meticulously true at the same time!

When an untrained beginner "has an idea" -- they get fired up with the conviction that this idea is unique, and that its value commercially lies in its uniqueness, and that they therefore must take the advice of lawyers and authors of great properties like Superman and protect themselves from people who want to "steal their idea."

This fallacy leads them swiftly down a blind alley. Some go looking for a ghost writer or co-author -- a writer with writer's skills to "turn this idea into a money maker."

All professionals have been approached by (and mystified by) people who say, "I have this great commercial idea, but I just need someone to write it. I'll give you half the money!"

And all professionals are beset by people who have written a story, novel, script, whatever, and "I just want you to rewrite it; you know, give it a little polish." Or suggestions that they will use to polish it.

The amateur possessed by An Idea seeks a very specific emotional payoff. Nothing a professional writer can do to their material will produce that payoff. That's why there are so many unsuccessful collaborations or ghost-writer contracts. That's why professionals don't want to touch an amateur's idea -- doing so leads into a quagmire of the very internal, very personal, unique-to-the-idea-generator, emotional search for satisfaction.

That imagined satisfaction would come, the amateur believes, from "seeing my story in print." Or on stage or in film.

Hence the huge market for self-publishing. There is a small percentage of books which ought to be self-published -- but it is not a huge market. Predators have enlarged that market because amateurs will pay to see their book in print. What the amateur hasn't grasped is that nobody wants to read their story. The devastation they experience is usually not handled well.

The big gaping difference between the amateur and the professional writer is not whether you make actual money off your words, but rather whether you understand the mechanism inside you that produces IDEAS.

Do you know what an "idea" is, where it comes from, and what to do with it once you have it?

Amateurs believe their ideas are unique and therefore sellable.

Professionals know that among their ideas are a few really valuable ones that can be monetized because the idea is NOT UNIQUE.

If it's personal, it's not sellable but rather "self-indulgent."

A professionally saleable idea is universal. It is a perfect reticulation of an archetype (one archetype per story; not half a dozen of them at once). It can't be given away to another writer to write because everyone already has it. And therefore it can't be stolen.

Hollywood is full of stories about writers who had been circulating a script on a given topic or background - an idea - and when a movie comes out using that idea, the amateur sues the producer or company for plagiarism. As I said - some amateurs don't handle rejection well because they don't understand the concept of An Idea plus the concept of Monetizing An Idea.

The thing which makes an idea worth money to a publisher or producer is that the seeds of it already reside within the audience, and probably every writer on earth, past, present, and future. It will be recognized as "mine" by a vast number of people.

The amateur "has an idea" and it is "mine." And therefore, they believe, proprietary stock in trade.

The amateur who writes such an idea up into a novel or script produces what Marion Zimmer Bradley referred to as a "self-indulgent story." It's a story about themselves, not about humanity.

The amateur is trying to write about his/her own personal experience of the world, of people. The amateur produces what became labeled in Star Trek fanzines as the "Mary Sue" story -- where the main character is an avatar of the author. When the author is not conscious of that mechanism, the resulting story is even worse.

The amateur who is unaware is enthusiastically and ritualistically indulging him/herself telling their own personal story -- without grounding in the archetype.

The professional (even one who has never sold) is not telling their own personal story -- but is telling YOUR STORY, the audience's story, the world's story, a readership or viewership's story -- a constituency's story.

The process of telling someone else's story is not clinical, intellectually distanced, calculated, deliberate.

The professional does something different from what the amateur does only in that moment after the self-indulgent personal story has burst into consciousness.

The professional takes the personal story that erupts from the subconscious and traces it back to its roots in the archetype that runs that professional's own personality.

For more on archetypes and your personality and your personal life and how you fit into the set of patterns common to all humanity -- psychology, timed-patterns of life's challenges, and the "lessons" life hurls at you personally -- see Astrology and the Tarot.

Many of the blazing, world-wide instant classics are actually stories which are visible in the writer's natal chart -- but not in their lives. Karmic stories from past lives, perhaps, or unrealized potential.

If you don't like that esoteric approach, read a lot (hundreds) of biographies and autobiographies, learn sociology, psychology, anthropology, archeology, etc etc. Actually, it's a good idea to have a solid grounding in all these anyway, but Tarot and Astrology do provide shortcuts and for some people clarification. For others, they are nonsense.

The point is that somewhere inside the amateur and the professional writer lies something totally personal, absolutely unique, the purest definition of Identity, which is at the same time also completely universal, utterly common, the purest definition of Society.

Astrology depicts this graphically in the opposition of the 1st House by the 7th House.

So, at the interface between the very, VERY personal -- and the infinite, the divine, the root commonality of all humanity -- Art is born.

At this innermost sanctum of your being, you grok or perceive the core pattern of existence, a core that you share with many other human beings, none of whom are anything like you.

Your recognition of what you have in common with others who are less articulate than you are is your stock in trade, the Art you can monetize commercially.

Yet your recognition has no value without that twist, turn, flip, color, depth, variation on the themes that is uniquely you.

Each human being is likewise unique.

One of the myriad things we have in common, and thus can learn from Art, is how each of us is unique and yet the same.

That's why Hollywood insists that scripts be "fresh and edgy -- totally original" and at the same time "exactly like some big, huge blockbuster success." Huge blockbuster successes are huge because they are rooted in an archetype, something Blake Snyder terms "Primal."

What we all find comfortably familiar is uniqueness.

The Art of storytelling lies in showing (without telling) the reader/viewer how the uniqueness of a character traces back down into the subconscious, deep, deep, abstract, theoretically, ineffably, to that divine spot in Creation where we are all the same.

The Artist (in any medium) connects the celebration of our uniqueness to the safety of our sameness.

That act of showing without telling the nature of the connection between the unique and the archetype is the one skill the professional has -- that the amateur doesn't (yet).

Depicting the connection can be learned -- maybe even taught.

SEEING that connection can not be learned or taught. It is the Art that is born within. It is the core skill of the magician -- perceiving the True Name of a Thing and thus gaining power over that thing.

It is a Gift.

Because of that universal fact, we have the burgeoning field of the Adult Fantasy novel -- thick novels filled with elaborate worldbuilding and characters who are born with magic, and others who are not. It's a juvenile premise -- some have Talent denied to others. But it's juvenile because it's primal, an archetype. Like all archetypes, it's both true and false at the same time. The Archetype exists above the level of reality where true and false first divide (see my books on The Tarot -- The Not So Minor Arcana.)

So the Artist's job is to connect the celebration of our uniqueness (the part the amateur writer gets very well indeed) to the more abstract security and safety of our sameness - the safety in numbers, the safety in protections of Law and Privilege and Riches, the safety of joining a gang, marrying a strong man.

The juxtaposition of Celebration and Safety -- exuberance and relaxation -- the simultaneous experience of these two opposites is exactly analogous to orgasm.

That's why the end of a book is called a climax.

The ability to find that connection is a Gift, a Talent -- a Vision. The connection itself is not yours. You don't own it. You don't have a proprietary interest in it. You can't sell it. The only thing that is yours, that you can sell, is your way of describing that connection.

We haven't discussed this aspect of writing before because the method relies on gaining a solid grasp of what Art is, where it comes from, and how to practice it, either commercially or as "fine art." Commercial fiction is one thing -- Creative Writing is another, more akin to "fine art" than to reaching a huge, artistically illiterate audience.

Previously, we've discussed the thematic sub-structure of various sized stories and how using that thematic backbone lets you paint on a much larger canvas, using more point of view characters.

All these different writing skills we've been discussing previously are actually not a hundred different, separate skills to be mastered only separately. They are actually just one single, unified thing.

Once you have:

1) read about one of these skills (Worldbuilding, Description, Dialogue, Action, Suspense, Exposition (yes, you need exposition, just not in lumps), Pacing, Dramatizing, Characterization, Motivation, Conflict, Resolution, Climax, etc etc)

2)read some more novels, dissecting out how different authors use these individual skills, then tried writing bits and pieces of something exercising that skill

3)then (and only then) you must start to practice integrating them.

Here we're talking about Art-Theme Integration, probably the easiest cross-term to master yet the hardest to describe.

With each and every individual writing skill, you work on it separately, master it separately (producing your million words for the garbage can because a finished Work needs all the skills simultaneously, but you must produce work which uses ONLY ONE skill at a time in order to train your subconscious), then integrate each separate skill with each and every previously mastered skill. Yep. Actually learn to walk and chew gum; pat your tummy and rub your head; whirl a plate on a stick and juggle four balls.

It's a program you put yourself through systematically. Writing is a performing art and you train to do it just exactly the way a ballet dancer trains for the Met. Ballet teachers don't let you go en pointe on day one of your training. Writing teachers don't let you start your magnum opus on day one of the class.

Like any performing art, writing takes training -- much more training than skill or even talent.

The more systematically you work on it -- the faster your subconscious will start to comply. Remember subconscious can not be taught, but it can be trained. It has the intelligence of a dog. You need kindness, consistency, and positive reinforcement not punishment to alter a behavior.

Well, all this is very nice -- very theoretical, very pie-in-the-sky, and very inspiring.

But HOW DO YOU DO IT??

What do you do with your mind to find that vision inside you which SEES the ART with which the universe is put together?

Very simple. You live in the real world. Daily. You pay attention to the real world around you.

That's how you train your subconscious to do fictional worldbuilding. It's the same training a graphic artist goes through. There's a trick to using your eyes to see what is there and how it would look in 2 dimensions that would suggest the 3rd dimension.

If your readers are going to believe the world you build -- it has to be congruent with the world they live in even though it lacks a dimension or more. So you need to learn a trick.

People (you included) live in their own subjective realities -- some components dictated by social sanction, some by personal needs, some by family needs, etc. but all very subjective.

Remember that THEME is a statement that your work of Art makes -- theme is what you have to say about that connection between the infinitely personal and the ineffably universal.

But if you simply write what you have worked out about that connection, you end up with (likely a better selling) a non-fiction work on a topic using a thesis, not a story about a character illustrating a theme.

The THEME is what you have to say. Once you have had "an idea" then traced it back to its roots in the ineffable which resides inside you, found how it connects to everyone else in the world, you are standing there in your mind looking at this discovery, screaming WOW!!!

Now you are seized with an irresistible urge to run back and TELL EVERYONE about this incredible discovery.

NOW I UNDERSTAND!!!! THIS IS IT. THIS IS THE KEY TO THE UNIVERSE! IF EVERYONE KNEW THIS THERE WOULDN'T BE ANY MORE WAR!!!!!!!!!!

That urge to TELL EVERYONE is your theme trying to be born out of your Art.

What are you going to SAY????? To whom? Who would have a chance of understanding this abstract, intangible, free floating feeling of a concept?

If you run out your front door and start babbling to the garbage truck driver -- what will happen?

In my first award winning novel, UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER,
(free chapters at http://www.simegen.com/writers/simegen/ and choose from menu on the left)
there's a quotation I wrote as part of the thematic statement of the novel. This was my second published novel and I did attempt more skills than I had. So I used a "device" to nail the theme -- quotations from a hypothetical work. One of them does, I believe, hold true in the real world.

"You can not give Wisdom as a Gift."

You can't tell someone a fact and transfer your wisdom into their heads.

And if you manage to couch the fact in Art and weave a novel around it -- the readers won't gain the wisdom you injected into it.

Marion Zimmer Bradley quoted this quote: The book the reader reads is not the book the writer wrote.

And that's OK. The reader shouldn't be reading YOUR book. That's what professionals understand that amateurs don't.

Make that credo your touchstone. The book the reader reads is not the book the writer wrote.
You can't go into that astral plane space in your head and bring back wisdom and inject it into the heads of your readers.

All you can do is assure them that there is a connection between their personal individuality and something larger that all humanity shares -- maybe with other species on other planets, too.

Yeah, I know -- that doesn't help at all when you're burning up to TELL THEM EVERYTHING.

So you must take this inner Artistic vision and turn it into 1 to 4 clean, clear, related, statements. This will be the theme, and maybe as many as 3 sub-themes that form the backbone of your work.

Everything in the work will either be derived from the theme or you will have to go through on second draft and select one of the themes from the pea-soup you wrote and then delete everything that doesn't explicate that theme. It's work. It's what you do for a living. Delete.

It's a process. It takes practice to do it with precision.

Now, how do you tell if you've arrived at a thematic statement derived from your artistic vision that actually does reside within most all humanity? Or at least your audience?

You can get lost in your imagination. You need to do a reality check both before you dive into your mind to find the connection between your view of reality and everyone else's view of reality -- and after you've returned with your theme burning holes in your mind.

There are a lot of things writers do on a day to day basis that fosters the subconscious' ability to identify these "universal themes" and to particularize or individualize the universality into something unique that is not the writer's own self.

A lot of writers just wander over to the mall, sit on a bench and people-watch. Actors do that too.

Some go to movies and watch the audience at least as much as they watch the movie.

Some join clubs, do volunteer work, work for the Red Cross disaster services, volunteer for political campaigns. Well, everyone does something like that -- but writers spend their time while doing these things OBSERVING.

That's the key word. OBSERVING. Just like a graphic artist. Just like any performing artist.

Performing Arts usually require 2 opposite skills. First there's the writer who creates the script -- then the actors who perform it. The choreographer who designs the dance -- the dancers who perform it.

Writers find their "script" or choreography or sheet music on the astral plane, in that space inside where the individual connects to the ineffable. The UNIVERSE is already written -- it's your script. Once you've been given your script, you must perform it.

By training your ability to OBSERVE -- like a detective, or a professional athelete, or a river boat pilot, an actor, a musician learning a song by hearing it -- honing your ability to observe until you could happily trust your life to it, you train your subconscious to see the patterns beneath reality.

You will know you have a viable commercial property when you find a self-indulgent, personally inspired IDEA connected to an Archetype which you have seen expressed in your outer-reality in several ways recently. When that happens, it means the universal consciousness is engaged in the issue and ready to listen to what you have to say on the subject. When you have a MATCH between the archetype you have discovered and the subject a lot of people are engaged in, you have a commercial property.

And you can talk about that idea, rave about it to everyone, try your best to 'GIVE IT AWAY' and you won't be able to.

It's commerical value can't be stolen from you, plagiarized, etc -- because it arises from the Art which is uniquely your own. No matter how you shout about it -- no other writer will be able to write your book.

Of course, after you've put all the words down -- yeah, people can steal your words, so they have to be protected by copyright every which way you can think of.

That's the business of writing.

But the professional knows that ideas are cheap, plentiful, but can't be stolen.

Nobody is interested in your personal ideas except you. What is personal to you is personal to you -- boring to anyone else.

Read some biographies and you'll see. What is interesting about a unique person is how they are actually just like you and me.

Isn't that what people are searching for in a Presidential Candidate? Someone they can relate to who understands what life is like for them?

So how do you pull this off? How do you train yourself to see, at one and the same instant, both the intensely personal and the unifying ineffable?

Watch television. You never know what you'll see after you've spent some years training your OBSERVATIONAL SKILLS.

Here's an example. Very personal.

I recently watched a few clips of the Summer Olympic games in China. And I've seen many news clips of Chinese government meetings, stock trading floors, etc. And there were a number of clips I saw of Chinese rescue officials working after a big earthquake.

I SAW at that time, the visible evidence of the underlying social sanctions of the Ancient and Modern Chinese culture -- which I know from archeology and anthropology go back thousands of years.

China is a culture where the individual is secondary, the family, the town, the group is primary. The family name is given first -- the personal name second -- and they don't put a comma between to show they've been reversed in order.

The value of the individual is how they FIT IN - how they are THE SAME. People who work in an assembly plant wear uniforms. They move the same. They gather at the same hour before work to do Tai Chi or some exercises -- all in UNISON.

This never astonished me or attracted my attention before the 2008 political conventions were broadcast.

Of course, China is like that. We all know that. What's to notice?

Many times, I've heard interviews with business people in the new China where it is possible for private individuals to establish businesses. Over and over, I've heard native Chinese who were educated in America point out that China doesn't INNOVATE -- but they're real real good at copying.

With the heating up of the 2008 political campaigns, I had occasion to stare at the US Natal Chart -- we have an Aquarius MC with an Aquarius Moon right on the MC. Our business in the world, our reason for existence is to be DIFFERENT. To Innovate. To Need Freedom! To be individuals first. We have a Cancer (home; mother; apple pie; nurturing; business incubators) on the 2nd House -- our main value is the FAMILY. But the family supports the individual -- not the other way around.

When I saw the conventions in the USA, (a lot of it I watched on C-SPAN so I saw things the networks neglected to broadcast because it's boring) I observed something I had seen before but not observed.

There were thousands of people in the auditorium (for both conventions - same image), and they were all dressed alike, but no two were wearing the same thing. Each day and evening had its "uniform." (casual; dress casual; office casual; semi-formal; formal) But G-d forbid two women would buy their dresses in the same store!

Well, no -- there were some delegations that had adopted hats, scarves, jackets to distinguish their state. DISTINGUISH their individuality. But even the people who were "in uniform" -- were all differently dressed in some other way. Balloons on their heads, stovepipe Dr. Seuss hat, etc. And their body language was distinctive, too.

A similar gathering of Chinese who were intent on the formal installation of a political figure to an office would have been really dressed alike. They would sit in their seats, feet on the floor, eyes front, and cheer in unison in all the right places. In China, ceremony is ceremony.

The USA delegations (both parties) during many of the speeches (except the main ones network broadcast, but even then!!!) milled about their seats, talked to people privately, totally self-absorbed in their conversations, came and went -- whole sections were empty at times -- stopped once in a while to applaud a speaker, and a few actually listened. But each adopted an individual seated posture.

Even during the major speeches, TV interviewers nabbed celebrities for an aside conversation while the other celebrity was speaking!

Both conventions' speakers were speaking to a milling throng of individuals, not an audience.

There I am paralyzed by this VISION -- what would a Chinese citizen who had never seen anything American in their life THINK of America to see this?

I know what I think of China to see the way they behave.

I have seen political conventions, and other huge gatherings of Americans on TV before, and the audiences looked normal to me, un-remarkable, practically invisible. Everyone is like that everywhere I go -- so what's to notice?

Suddenly - everything is to notice! That's what observation is.

My extremely negative reaction to Chinese public behavior must be mirrored in the average Chinese person's reaction to American public behavior.

I would assume the images of the convention delegates' behavior broadcast world wide by at least CNN, if not many other networks, must be telling the Chinese that Americans don't take government seriously, that these American people know they have no sayso in how this election comes out, all decisions are made in the back room just like in China, the people have no power, and that they really don't care who becomes President of the USA anyway. All Americans care about is themselves as individuals.

Most of all, those images of our public behavior have to mean to the Chinese that we have no strength, no substance, no guts, and will be easily beaten.

OK, you may disagree with "what" I saw and how I've expressed it here. That's actually good. It means you have a VISION and therefore are an ARTIST and will eventually find a THEME to turn into a novel.

My point is that from the ambient "reality" I have extracted a contrast-compare essay subject, two cultures alien to one another.

Take that attribute, individuality vs. the collective, and worldbuild a galactic civilization, find characters who are in conflict because of the differing philosophies -- and you have something which can communicate to all the people who have seen these TV images I've described (millions).

Translated into thematic language, you would have Individuality Poisons Society. Or maybe The Individual Must Reign Supreme. Only through the group can prosperity be safe. Humanity's progress depends on the individual secure in personal freedom.

Apply to that some specific individualities, connect the individuals to the archetypes, cut, trim and hone a theme from all that, and you are ready to plot a novel.

Well, you are ready if you've studied enough philosophy to understand the long history of the argument and conflict between the individual and the collective (1st House/ 7th House in Astrology -- which lies athwart the perennial conflict of 10th House, 4th House -- career and home).

You don't study philosophy etc to find out what you think. You need it to know what your readership thinks so you can talk to them in a language they understand.

There is an old adage that you have no doubt seen in almost every book on writing you've read: Write What You Know.

You can't do that if you don't know anything.

It doesn't mean use your own profession, home, family, neighbors, school, education or job as what you write about.

You know this cliche: "I've forgotten more about XYZ than you will ever know!"

What does that mean? Think about it. It means this elder has reached the point of being an ARTIST in his field -- working mostly from the subconscious and thus producing results far superior to those produced by a neo who has to think about everything.

What "you know" -- is what you've forgotten.

And that's what you should write about -- that's where your Art can define THEMES for you.

In order to have forgotten something -- you must first learn it.

So the business of being a commercial writer is the business of learning something about everything. There is no field that isn't professional training for a writer.

That's nice because writer-types generally have an eclectic and far-ranging curiosity about everything but don't tend to stick with a subject long enough to become professional in it, at least not unless it involves the use of words.

Once you have a firm grasp of how the world works, and how it looks and seems to others, you can build fictional worlds that seem realistic to others. To accomplish that, you will have to use Theme as your main Artistic Medium.

So if you're a professional writer, you have an excuse to self-indulgently become a dilettante!

But that only works if you then use what you've forgotten to produce deathless prose!

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.slantedconcept.com
http://www.simegen.com/jl/ 

More posts on Worldbuilding
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/01/worldbuilding-for-science-fiction.html