Writing popular fiction

being turned on.
    Here, the reader is confronted with an alien quality so fundamental that it becomes impossible for him to think of the hero, Hulann, as a fancily dressed human. If naoli and man are so different in the way they sleep and wake, how much more must they differ on complex questions? Also, with the key words and phrases like "lizard men," "scaly-tailed," "webs," and "tough gray skin," the unhuman appearance of the aliens is kept in the front of the reader's mind.
    Other physiological references abound:
He snorted, opening his second set of nostrils now that he would need a full air supply for movement. When his lungs swelled and adjusted to the new air flow, he got out of bed.
    And:
Hulann moved closer, raising the double .lids completely free of his huge, oval eyes.
    And this:
Hulann winced. His double stomach burned on both levels with acidic agitation.
    Aside from their physical peculiarities, alien creatures will have habits and gestures that are unlike human habits and gestures. The naoli, for example, use sweet-drugs rather than alcohol, a substance with no effect on human beings. As for their gestures:
He tucked his tail between his legs, wrapping it around his left thigh in the age-old reaction to danger, to the unknown, to that which made the scales of the scalp tighten and ache.
    A human being's reaction to fear might be a hunching of the shoulders, a stiffening of the back, balling of the fists. But the naoli are not human beings. Another gesture:
[Hulann] passed the others without comment, noticing the odd looks he drew from them. Realizing that his lips were pulled in over his teeth, giving him a look of shame, he quickly rearranged his facial composure…
    When we say a
man
looks shamefaced, we certainly don't mean that he has his lips drawn in over his teeth!
    Having convincingly established the differences in appearance between the aliens and mankind, you must make continual application of these differences, elaborating on them, throughout the story. This can be done in any of three ways: (1) through the alien's relationships with his own kind, (2) through his contacts with men, (3) through his reactions to events in the story.
    Let's look, for example, at alien-to-alien interaction in
Beastchild
, one of many such scenes in the book, this one concerning naoli sexuality:
She licked her lips with her tongue, then stuck more of it out and flicked at her chin. She was pretty. He did not understand how he had almost walked by without stopping.
    Certainly, a man would not be attracted to a woman whose tongue was so long she could lick her chin with it and did so, apparently, with some regularity. But naoli values of beauty will be different from those of a man. And, having established a naoli's sexuality, one must also expect it to be satisfied in a manner unlike human satisfaction:
He watched her a moment longer, reluctant to leave. More than any other female he had seen in the last two hundred years, she made him want to make a verbal commitment. It would be a delight to go away with her, into the warren of his own house back on the home world, and fuse for sixteen days, living off the fat of their bodies and the ceremonial waters they would take with them.
    He could envision her in ecstasy.
    And when she came out of the warren, she would have the gaunt, fleshless look of a desirable woman who has mated for the standard fusing period.
    She would be gorgeous in the aura of her femininity.
    In a few simple paragraphs that don't interrupt the narrative flow, the reader gets a glimpse of another basic difference between men and naoli, as profound a difference as the way they sleep and wake.
    Through contact with men, the alien's unhuman qualities will also be driven home, as in the following exchange between Hulann and a human child, Leo, whom he has befriended against all the laws of his race which has been at war with ours for many years:
"Doesn't that hurt?" Leo asked.
    "What?"
    "Your lips. When you pull them in over your teeth like that."
    Hulann quickly showed his teeth, put a hand to his lips and felt them. "No," he said. "We -have few nerves in our outer layers of flesh."
    "You look funny," Leo said. He drew his own lips in over his teeth and made talking motions, then burst out laughing.
    Hulann found himself laughing also, watching the boy mimic him. Did he really look like that? It was a mysterious expression on a naoli; or at least he had been raised to respect it as such. In this