You say Potatoe

I'm working on a plotting problem.

That's not really a good description, though. I find myself once again reaching for more precise terminology. There's plot and there's plot. There's drama and there's drama.

Okay, the later. You could say that a light-saber duel over a lava pool is more "dramatic" than a guy buying soap. Of course "dramatic" is contextual. Some people are heartily bored by light-sabers. And buying soap may be part of an intense and moving odyssey...just ask Leopold Bloom. But "dramatic" in the sense of emotionally stirring is only one meaning; the word also is made to serve the workmanlike function of turning incident into narrative. I might need to talk about the dramatic arc, or even how to dramatize an incident or a theme or a character attribute, and at no time be implicitly saying I am trying to put more action or emotion into it.

Plot, too. In my mind there are at least two major parts of plot. There's the mechanics of where they went and what they did there. And there's the reason -- the writer's reason -- for why they went there and why they did the thing they did there. In the former are problems that can be solved with a map. In the latter are problems of pacing and structure that need, well, other tools.

Sometimes the two are separable. "We rode to the next town" can be the action under the emotional arc (fleeing the Shire), the dramatic purpose of the scene itself (the midnight ride of Paul Revere), or a mere setting detail placed beneath the real purpose of the narrative (and along the way each of us told stories).

At other times they are more tightly bound. And that's where I am now; one of those "interesting" plotting problems where the greater themes and character arcs and the basic look and feel of the novel are all being examined simultaneous to trying to solve a mechanical issue of who knew what when and did what with it.



Not to reveal too much too early but I'm struggling with an archaeological dig in Germany and some looted Greek antiquities are involved. My first idea was that this is a laundering scheme. It might still be one step in a triangulation, but Germany has recently tightened up its antiquities laws and in any case few nations are happy to have people sell what they dig up. So if the purpose was the laundry, getting near an active dig is the last thing you want to do.

So...is this a clandestine dig, and/or are they being wink-wink nudge-nudge about the trafficking the site is enabling? Or more along the lines of "Cool discoveries, eh? Well, by sheer coincidence, I happen to own a small gallery in London where some similar -- but entirely legal, I assure you -- items can be obtained."

Who is the dig for? The big artifact sales are largely done with private contact between major dealers and the curators at museums, through their social circles. The smaller traffic, though...that's a bit more plausible. But given the context -- a dig that in the eyes of some is demonstrating a clear connection between Germany and Greece during the Greek Dark Ages -- are the illegal sales here selling the sizzle or selling the steak? Are these "Look at this beautiful pot" or are they "Look at this ugly pot that proves something mainstream archaeology is trying to hide?"

I don't really know. I'm in a yarn tangle, viewing Venn diagrams distorted through more than three dimensions, trying to balance what is believable, what tells the story of actual trafficking, what advances the character arcs and the overall story arc, and what is dramatic in the "light-saber duel over the lava pool" sense.

This is a really tough spot in the plot for the novel because this is what I've been calling the Yamatai moment. What Campbell called the Abyss, the belly of the beast. A place where my character, who has been up to this point rather bemusedly falling down the rabbit hole, suddenly hits dirt and it is nasty mud with all kinds of sharp pointy rocks in it. Basically, this is when shit turns real.

All the themes of not just this book but the projected series are showing up in this one small spot. And I'm early enough in the development process (I plan to be doing a fair amount of Discovery Writing) there's not much that isn't up for grabs. Even Germany is largely there because I've had boots on the ground and don't have to rely exclusively on Wikipedia to describe it. (Yes, there are themes a German site advances, but I'm on the fence about whether it in the end helps or hinders my various purposes).

About the only thing I can't change is that these are stolen Greek antiquities. Because if I change that so much of the structure goes away I might as well start a different book.