I am totally the wrong person to attempt a historical novel. Not because I'm so weak at history. Because I'm so crazy about getting things right. Even when "getting it right" wasn't in the requirements in the first place.
My (almost-finished) Tomb Raider/Stargate cross-over had some big escape clauses. First, it's Tomb Raider (actually, Stargate is even worse.) Canonically, Atlantis was a real place. Writing a Tomb Raider story that is honest to the existing canon is by definition writing wrong history. (It's subtler than that; especially with Stargate's implicit aliens-built-the-pyramids foundation, all of history and the process of history have to be warped to work within the framework of that universe).
Second, it was a fanfic. At any point I could declare that getting something right was just too much work. And if I made an error, I wasn't going back to fix it.
This novel is looking to be mainstream historical fiction. That's bad.
Today I looked sideways at the outline that didn't seem to be working and I realized how it works in a more deeply satisfying way than I had intended. I still don't have the end. I don't even know how long the thing is. But I'm now satisfied with what a big chunk of it is going to look like.
Here's the simple part of todays insight; my three main characters are all in an outsider position. Arachne (none of them have real names yet, just place-holders) is coming down from a mountain temple to try to make her way in Creto-Mycenaean society. Xenephon (the place-holder names keep changing, too, as I focus on different roles for them) is deep in the Hittite Empire. And Setna (he totally, totally is Setna, to the point where I might have to keep the name) is digging into the past of Egypt thus contextualizing where they came from and where they are currently.
Not only are they acting as reader surrogate to learn about these places, this is also a process of discovering the pressures on and the flaws within the palatial structure that within the decade will come tumbling down.
The other interesting tone color here is that each has a different kind of story. Xenephon's is largely a military story; the Homeric questions of blood and honor against a background of an impossible mission deep behind enemy lines. So all your good sword-hewing manly men stuff. Setna's is intellectual adventure, but even more, he is recapitulating the very processes (archaeology, translation and interpretation of old texts) by which we moderns came to our current understanding of his time.
And Arachene's story is deeply societal. No sword-swinging or exploring crumbling tombs here. This is the stuff that's truest to the current ideal of historical fiction.
Now, I do miss one thing. These had always intended to be (or to grow into) extraordinary people. But originally, their extraordinariness grew out of a chance meeting between an Egyptian sage and a Minoan seer, joining forces over the text, the magic of what had been or will be written. I sort of miss that little partnership, of what had been in those earlier versions a young naive optimist with an extraordinary gift, and her kindly and somewhat dotty mentor who under his unprepossessing exterior has command of terrifying powers. Add their Mycenaean bodyguard in a bit of a big-brother position in the triumvirate.
Perhaps fortunately Arachne has grown considerably as I've worked, to where all three will have solo adventures that make them believably tough by the time they all get together.
Oh, and I still have no idea what to do with them as a team, or how to end the story. Or even how long it will all be, and what proportion will be the solo stuff.
The solution to my backstory woes, though, turns out to have been simple enough. Keep them in strict chronology. We'll be moving from character to character as their personal arcs intersect the larger arc of the Bronze Age Collapse. Which means, for instance, most of the early chapters are Setna's, experiencing the collapse as nothing more than distant rumbles. Wilusa becomes the first domino seen on screen, with Xenephon largely tracking the greater movement of the Sea Peoples.
Which is also a problem for me. Instead of working travelogue style, keeping open only the books that pertain to whatever country the story is currently set in, I'll have to keep all the books open and spinning (whilst The Sabre Dance plays in the background, no doubt).
I've also committed to getting a lot deeper into Mycenae society than I thought I would. And, yes; since I'm giving Setna so much adventure in his backstory, he is indeed going to go to Amarna (as well as, of course, to Deir el-Medina).
And, yes, that's another thing I lose with this plan; the idea of a warning from the future that motivates the cast. They are all in activity long before the letter from Ugarit is unearthed.
This does put me in an awkward position re my recreational reading. As much as there is going to be a huge stack of everything from the beliefs of Akhenaten to potential contact between Celtic Britain and the Mediterranean, what I need to do before I make that list and start loading up on papers is to solve the later parts of the plot.
I think gods may be back on the menu. I'm not sure how else to achieve what I want to achieve.
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