On the terrace, with a cutlass

I lost track of the other point I meant to make in the last post. And that is how ridiculously easy it is to justify a certain kind of set dressing in-story. I set up up a situation in my last fanfic where Teal’c — having promised “not to go shooting up the place” — ends up defending Croft Manor by making use of the museum’s-worth of ancient arms and armor displayed in the lavish halls. To the extent that the mercenary leader responds to the increasingly bizarre reports he’s getting on the radio with, “Is this a SITREP or a game of Clue?”

But that was just for the amusement factor. Since I'm doing a story in Athens about antiquities smuggling it would be both far too tempting and far too easy to end up with a climax that's drawn straight from one of the duels in The Illiad. Bronze armor and all. But I don't want to go there, not with this. I did a whole set of short stories in which I played this game and hopefully that got most of it out of my system.

(I'm trying to think of a clearer example of what I'm talking about, this sort of taking a theme and putting it on everything. Say the plot de jour is a pirate treasure. It would just so happen that the only marine salvage vessel they could get their hands on was an old sailing ship, it would just so happen that one of the bad guys lost an eye and a leg in the Gulf War, and it would just so happen that a major chapter takes place on Talk Like a Pirate Day.)

Sure, classical subjects are going to come up. People are going to quote Homer. But they'll also quote modern authors, and talk about the current economic woes of Greece, and use FaceBook.



And that sort of segues to my current issue. My plot is getting pedestrian. Sure, there's some amusing stuff happening; my protagonist is going to almost fall from the Acropolis, be thrown from a ferry boat, and try to wrestle a giant mook (he's about to smash the titular antiquity). But I came up with this idea as a way of excusing or at least smoothing an acceptance (okay, let's be honest; my acceptance) of both some pseudo-archaeological discoveries and some crazed stunting around. Plus the conceit that untrained amateur without legal standing is going around discovering things and fighting crooks and whatever.

I don't want to do a story that only verges on the implausible then drop the reader into a sword fight on a submarine as it sinks into Atlantis in the next book. If I mean to write more than one, I'd like to avoid as much "early installment weirdness" as I can.

Even if I’m dry of ideas right now for some new action. In fact, all I can think of at the moment is...to look towards The Odessey for inspiration.