Did I mention I hated writing in First-Person?
Actually, it isn't that. Or it isn't just that. It is writing in "Immediate Past" tense. First-Person just makes it worse.
I had two sequences recently in which my protagonist had to endure. Which meant time had to pass. But because of the "Immediate Past" tense I couldn't write, "another hour had passed" or "for the next two hours" or any of that usual narrative time bridge.
A way to look at that tense is as frames in sequential art. Any action that is captured is done so with a discrete snapshot. Comic Book artist John Byrne would talk about beginning writers who would say, "In panel #3 Spider-Man swings in through the window, notices there is a bomb, and swings back out just before it goes off." No, that's three panels. At least.
So what I've established at this point is that when my narrator speaks, she describes what is contemporary to the moment; "I was in the water." The only way for her to say, "I had been in the water an hour ago" is if something specific in the present moment had brought that to her attention. Say, "I looked at my watch again. Yup. I'd been in the water for over an hour."
When it works it is seamless and invisible, even if it does impart a slightly breathless quality to things. What it doesn't let me do is fast forward through the boring parts. I am either in the moment with the action, or looking back on the action.
Because Immediate Past tense is so rooted in the now, each jump has more impact and is more potentially disorienting. It takes more words; to re-establish the moment after each jump, and to prepare for the jump. This is on a paragraph level at least. The major jumps, I had established earlier actually went across a scene break.
I have a feeling it would be easier to deal with this in Third Person.
Monday, July 29, 2019
Sunday, July 28, 2019
Shipping News
50K. So maybe I don't need to add a whole sub-plot. I'll see how the Athens chapters unpack.
I finished the stuff with the car ferry and the cigarette boat. There's now several scenes where I could go back and add another 500 words dialog easy -- particularly Venice after she gets fished out of the canal. So I'm not worried about reaching total page count. Just about getting the pacing right and the various plot turns and climaxes happening where they should.
Okay, numbers check. I started the Italy sequence on July 7 (or, rather, I blogged on that day about being done with the Germany sequence). As of the 28th I've put down 15,000 words and am back in Athens. That's a bit over 700 words a day average. Not all that bad, actually.
So I think it is reasonable to expect to finish a draft by the end of September. Then I can clean house, record some more music...
...do final editing, do the cover...
I finished the stuff with the car ferry and the cigarette boat. There's now several scenes where I could go back and add another 500 words dialog easy -- particularly Venice after she gets fished out of the canal. So I'm not worried about reaching total page count. Just about getting the pacing right and the various plot turns and climaxes happening where they should.
Okay, numbers check. I started the Italy sequence on July 7 (or, rather, I blogged on that day about being done with the Germany sequence). As of the 28th I've put down 15,000 words and am back in Athens. That's a bit over 700 words a day average. Not all that bad, actually.
So I think it is reasonable to expect to finish a draft by the end of September. Then I can clean house, record some more music...
...do final editing, do the cover...
Saturday, July 27, 2019
Badger-1 ready for launch
Woke up and jotted down a bunch of notes for the Transhumanist Future War Love Triangle. There's enough there to fill a book and there are strong enough threads to make decent plot.
When I have a whole bunch of notes come to me at once I use a BBC technique. Might have been the old show As it Happens where I heard this. Anyhow, the newscaster would both preview and recap the top stories with a series of extremely short phrases: "Iranian Election, Space colonized, bees rise up, singularity achieved."
So the first thing I wrote down was; "Bess, Bob, hunger, paperclip, Fermi, Nature vs., Mr. Black.
On the actual current novel, I missed a chance to do more method acting-writing. I was sick for a couple of days. My character, I've decided, is going to be sick on the car ferry back to Greece. Sick the entire day. There's not much to look at from the center of a shipping lane anyhow.
When I have a whole bunch of notes come to me at once I use a BBC technique. Might have been the old show As it Happens where I heard this. Anyhow, the newscaster would both preview and recap the top stories with a series of extremely short phrases: "Iranian Election, Space colonized, bees rise up, singularity achieved."
So the first thing I wrote down was; "Bess, Bob, hunger, paperclip, Fermi, Nature vs., Mr. Black.
* * *
On the actual current novel, I missed a chance to do more method acting-writing. I was sick for a couple of days. My character, I've decided, is going to be sick on the car ferry back to Greece. Sick the entire day. There's not much to look at from the center of a shipping lane anyhow.
Thursday, July 25, 2019
What's Opera, Doc?
Had the first response from a beta reader today.
The phrase I want to focus on is, "I...can tell that you have been there..."
This. This sense of verisimilitude. It isn't for bragging rights, it isn't a sort of academic contest like being able to describe a scene using only words beginning with "B." It isn't even the reproducibility thing I've harped on before (if I tell a reader you can get on the people-mover at Piazalle Roma, then I run the risk that someone might try and do so on their vacation in Venice.)
No, the strongest reason for that intangible rightness is that it makes the story more compelling. It reaches the reader emotionally, in a specific way.
But that, alas, was in reference to a scene I set on the Acropolis of Athens. I just finished the Italy sequence, and through all of it I was reduced to second-hand. I've watched videos, looked at maps, read reviews, talked to friends. But I haven't been there, smelled, felt, heard, tried speaking the language, been part of the rhythms.
What is Venice like at 9 PM? I know how a December night unfolds in Paris; who is on the streets, when the shops close, when the bars close. I know because I was there. Venice? I had to fake it, based on what little information I could scrounge up.
But here is the big contrast.
During the Venice chapter, the following dialog occurs as a busker singing opera excerpts interacts with his audience:
This, again, is verisimilitude. I worked that opera. I know the aria, the scene, the context. Sure, I could have researched enough to find some hook to build a similar "bit" around, but this came without any need to look up anything beyond confirming the spelling of the opening phrase. Heck, I even wrote "baritone" into the text before checking the parts in a listing for Tosca.
Tosca was on my mind already, of course, because the much later area "Vissi d'arte" is named and described in my scene. The point of all this, though, is that this is how writing from experience works. You write things not just of a kind but in a way that is convincing.
(Okay...the way I experienced this aria through performance, and the way I've seen buskers and others work with an audience through similar things makes me believe you could carry it off as described. The point again being this would not even have occurred if I didn't have this deep experience to draw upon. A video can lead you to believe the roar of the mechanical lion outside a tent at Oktoberfest might be startling. Actual experience tells you the Acropolis feels like it is floating above the Attic plane; you can't even see Athens from much of it.)
The phrase I want to focus on is, "I...can tell that you have been there..."
This. This sense of verisimilitude. It isn't for bragging rights, it isn't a sort of academic contest like being able to describe a scene using only words beginning with "B." It isn't even the reproducibility thing I've harped on before (if I tell a reader you can get on the people-mover at Piazalle Roma, then I run the risk that someone might try and do so on their vacation in Venice.)
No, the strongest reason for that intangible rightness is that it makes the story more compelling. It reaches the reader emotionally, in a specific way.
But that, alas, was in reference to a scene I set on the Acropolis of Athens. I just finished the Italy sequence, and through all of it I was reduced to second-hand. I've watched videos, looked at maps, read reviews, talked to friends. But I haven't been there, smelled, felt, heard, tried speaking the language, been part of the rhythms.
What is Venice like at 9 PM? I know how a December night unfolds in Paris; who is on the streets, when the shops close, when the bars close. I know because I was there. Venice? I had to fake it, based on what little information I could scrounge up.
But here is the big contrast.
During the Venice chapter, the following dialog occurs as a busker singing opera excerpts interacts with his audience:
“For my next, I need a little help. You there, Sir, you look like a baritone.”
“I’m not much of a…” the audience member protested.
“Do not worry, Sir, the part of the Sacristan is simple. Here are the words; I will cue you. Now…’Dammi i colori…’”
This, again, is verisimilitude. I worked that opera. I know the aria, the scene, the context. Sure, I could have researched enough to find some hook to build a similar "bit" around, but this came without any need to look up anything beyond confirming the spelling of the opening phrase. Heck, I even wrote "baritone" into the text before checking the parts in a listing for Tosca.
Tosca was on my mind already, of course, because the much later area "Vissi d'arte" is named and described in my scene. The point of all this, though, is that this is how writing from experience works. You write things not just of a kind but in a way that is convincing.
(Okay...the way I experienced this aria through performance, and the way I've seen buskers and others work with an audience through similar things makes me believe you could carry it off as described. The point again being this would not even have occurred if I didn't have this deep experience to draw upon. A video can lead you to believe the roar of the mechanical lion outside a tent at Oktoberfest might be startling. Actual experience tells you the Acropolis feels like it is floating above the Attic plane; you can't even see Athens from much of it.)
Wednesday, July 24, 2019
Paris, Texas
Yeah, so when the Eiffel Tower comes up on the screen, accordion music starts, do you really need the label to pop up as well?
On the other hand, just try researching night life, bicycle rental, or anything else that sounds like it should belong on Venice "Beach" and see just how hard it is to pull out results for Venice, Italy out of the noise.
On the other hand, just try researching night life, bicycle rental, or anything else that sounds like it should belong on Venice "Beach" and see just how hard it is to pull out results for Venice, Italy out of the noise.
Monday, July 22, 2019
A Fondamental truth
That bit about having to get certain things right? It came up during the big chase scene. My character runs down a fondamente along a narrow rio, through a sottoportego into a campo and along a calle to the ponte across another rio. (Over the course of about a page...it's not all in one sentence!)
This isn't there because I'm showing off. Oh, sure, some of it is local color but it isn't the "call a rabbit a smeerp" thing James Blish made fun of. These terms are specific and descriptive in ways that would take longer to say in other ways, other ways that would sound clunky and be potentially misleading (you shouldn't really call it a "canal" because there's only half a dozen of those in Venice; the rest are smaller waterways and are called by a different name). It is more efficient, more accurate, and yes more colorful to use the Venetian terminology.
Plus that's a theme and an aim in the book; the acquisition of local knowledge. In the scene just prior I brought up the term "Acqua Alta" but never let my protagonist figure it out (she doesn't even realize the water she is seeing is basically temporary).
And so I need to make sure that I am using these terms correctly. Because some reader is going to see that and assume that is what they actually call the thing locally.
* * *
I'm still backing way off on researching stuff. It takes time which I don't want to spend any more. I feel a need to get a draft done and see what the whole thing feels like.
It still feels to me like there's too much going on. It is a problem of conservation of detail. There should be extraneous detail, of course. A mystery, a thriller, even a fairy tale is built around the ability of the hero to single out (or to fail to single out!) the one important detail from all the noise around it.
The trick is making it obvious in hindsight.
The problems I am having are three. For one, the real world IS messy. The experience of travel and the experience of history is one of a lot of information and even a lot of disagreement. To say you go to Athens and see monuments of Ancient Greece is to lie. If you go to Athens you see Athens, a modern, living city with a long history and complicated problems, and in Athens are monuments and ruins and reconstructions across a span of time from the Mycenae out to World War II.
You can focus the literary camera in on just what you want to emphasize, but the story I am trying to communicate in this particular novel is that juxtaposition; of what Ancient Greece means to a modern world struggling with current-day problems.
The second problem is you want some words there. The more concrete a detail is, the more weight it carries. Writing "a nine foot high statue in stone" is a lot less interesting to the reader than "A statue of a winged figure in helmet and spear, carved from gleaming white limestone." And it adds more resonance if you can say "A statue of Athena Nike..." (and the rest follows as of above.) It gives the reader a richer experience. It also adds words, because at some cold calculating point a novel is an organized set of words of some length and you've got to get to that length somehow.
And the last is a specific of the first; that I'm trying to be honest not just to the general shape of the world but specific details. If I say there is a bronze of Julia in the garden below "Julia's Balcony" then there really is. I'm trying very hard not to arbitrarily move trattoria and artworks and entire towns around because it allows me to focus the narrative better.
I'm willing to "Bullit" a little with the map, but at some point I have to admit that you can't climb the Acropolis without passing through a lot of stuff that isn't at all Classical Era.
This isn't there because I'm showing off. Oh, sure, some of it is local color but it isn't the "call a rabbit a smeerp" thing James Blish made fun of. These terms are specific and descriptive in ways that would take longer to say in other ways, other ways that would sound clunky and be potentially misleading (you shouldn't really call it a "canal" because there's only half a dozen of those in Venice; the rest are smaller waterways and are called by a different name). It is more efficient, more accurate, and yes more colorful to use the Venetian terminology.
Plus that's a theme and an aim in the book; the acquisition of local knowledge. In the scene just prior I brought up the term "Acqua Alta" but never let my protagonist figure it out (she doesn't even realize the water she is seeing is basically temporary).
And so I need to make sure that I am using these terms correctly. Because some reader is going to see that and assume that is what they actually call the thing locally.
* * *
I'm still backing way off on researching stuff. It takes time which I don't want to spend any more. I feel a need to get a draft done and see what the whole thing feels like.
It still feels to me like there's too much going on. It is a problem of conservation of detail. There should be extraneous detail, of course. A mystery, a thriller, even a fairy tale is built around the ability of the hero to single out (or to fail to single out!) the one important detail from all the noise around it.
The trick is making it obvious in hindsight.
The problems I am having are three. For one, the real world IS messy. The experience of travel and the experience of history is one of a lot of information and even a lot of disagreement. To say you go to Athens and see monuments of Ancient Greece is to lie. If you go to Athens you see Athens, a modern, living city with a long history and complicated problems, and in Athens are monuments and ruins and reconstructions across a span of time from the Mycenae out to World War II.
You can focus the literary camera in on just what you want to emphasize, but the story I am trying to communicate in this particular novel is that juxtaposition; of what Ancient Greece means to a modern world struggling with current-day problems.
The second problem is you want some words there. The more concrete a detail is, the more weight it carries. Writing "a nine foot high statue in stone" is a lot less interesting to the reader than "A statue of a winged figure in helmet and spear, carved from gleaming white limestone." And it adds more resonance if you can say "A statue of Athena Nike..." (and the rest follows as of above.) It gives the reader a richer experience. It also adds words, because at some cold calculating point a novel is an organized set of words of some length and you've got to get to that length somehow.
And the last is a specific of the first; that I'm trying to be honest not just to the general shape of the world but specific details. If I say there is a bronze of Julia in the garden below "Julia's Balcony" then there really is. I'm trying very hard not to arbitrarily move trattoria and artworks and entire towns around because it allows me to focus the narrative better.
I'm willing to "Bullit" a little with the map, but at some point I have to admit that you can't climb the Acropolis without passing through a lot of stuff that isn't at all Classical Era.
Sunday, July 21, 2019
Location scouting
Wrote a chase scene today. Set it in Venice the way Bullit is set in San Francisco. Sure, I checked maps and street-level pictures and videos to find places where certain specific actions could plausibly happen. But I used them without regard for where they were in relation to each other. I also didn't name anything, so nobody is going to know.
I also gave up on getting the setting of the next chapter completely accurate. Half the point of this book was to use what I already know. So I'm borrowing the ferry I actually rode instead of trying to describe one unseen. I'm changing the names anyhow.
There's a fine line there and I don't know what or where it is. Books name institutions and public figures and commercial products all the time. Characters in books will buy at Sears, drink Coke, vote for Truman. And it gets more specific and more close to home. Parker named specific books by specific (living) authors, and actual businesses in the Boston area.
Well, I'm naming a few actual places as well. I've just made a point to be even-handed, and the smaller the entity (like a single bookstore in Venice) the more neutral-positive I want to be. Lufthansa I'm willing to criticize. A small tratoria I'd as soon just say, "the food was good" and leave it at that.
Last week I got to fly on a short-hop business airline. Private terminal, no TSA, no lines. Shoes stayed on. Different experience and an extremely positive one. Flew to Burbank, which is an experience all in itself. I managed to remain calm while shaking the hand of someone whose shoes probably cost more than I make in a year. What isn't making me calm is that my company is ordering tens of thousands of dollars of material based on MY measurements. No pressure!
And it has nothing to do with the "location" theme of this post, but messing around with the Yamaha Venova seems to have sharpened my trumpet chops. I'm pushing through the scales fast enough the cheap valves on my current trumpet are starting to hold me back. I'm also getting the first two or three pedal tones on a regular basis. Oddly enough the violin hasn't completely left me; I pulled it out and was able to get through a couple of tunes even without the shoulder rest.
My new neighbor really hates it when I practice at home, though. That's something I have no good solution for. Well, it can wait. A lot of things can wait. I'm walking again (after having dropped a battery-powered drill on my foot from high enough to drive the bit through my shoe), and hoping to steadily increase my exercise and decrease my waist.
And I'm past the mid-point on the novel with more and more of the foundation work already done. Blew through a 2,000 word chase scene in one writing session. I already have the bulk of two or three other scenes worked out in my head. The biggest thing I have to worry about going forward is whether I fall so short of my page count I have to add some new element to the mix.
I also gave up on getting the setting of the next chapter completely accurate. Half the point of this book was to use what I already know. So I'm borrowing the ferry I actually rode instead of trying to describe one unseen. I'm changing the names anyhow.
There's a fine line there and I don't know what or where it is. Books name institutions and public figures and commercial products all the time. Characters in books will buy at Sears, drink Coke, vote for Truman. And it gets more specific and more close to home. Parker named specific books by specific (living) authors, and actual businesses in the Boston area.
Well, I'm naming a few actual places as well. I've just made a point to be even-handed, and the smaller the entity (like a single bookstore in Venice) the more neutral-positive I want to be. Lufthansa I'm willing to criticize. A small tratoria I'd as soon just say, "the food was good" and leave it at that.
Last week I got to fly on a short-hop business airline. Private terminal, no TSA, no lines. Shoes stayed on. Different experience and an extremely positive one. Flew to Burbank, which is an experience all in itself. I managed to remain calm while shaking the hand of someone whose shoes probably cost more than I make in a year. What isn't making me calm is that my company is ordering tens of thousands of dollars of material based on MY measurements. No pressure!
And it has nothing to do with the "location" theme of this post, but messing around with the Yamaha Venova seems to have sharpened my trumpet chops. I'm pushing through the scales fast enough the cheap valves on my current trumpet are starting to hold me back. I'm also getting the first two or three pedal tones on a regular basis. Oddly enough the violin hasn't completely left me; I pulled it out and was able to get through a couple of tunes even without the shoulder rest.
My new neighbor really hates it when I practice at home, though. That's something I have no good solution for. Well, it can wait. A lot of things can wait. I'm walking again (after having dropped a battery-powered drill on my foot from high enough to drive the bit through my shoe), and hoping to steadily increase my exercise and decrease my waist.
And I'm past the mid-point on the novel with more and more of the foundation work already done. Blew through a 2,000 word chase scene in one writing session. I already have the bulk of two or three other scenes worked out in my head. The biggest thing I have to worry about going forward is whether I fall so short of my page count I have to add some new element to the mix.
Tuesday, July 16, 2019
Musical Interlude
Turns out you do bite.
Now that I've figured out how the embouchure is supposed to work I got a lot better at the Venova, fast. Lower two octaves more-or-less clean and with concentration I can get through the top of the second and into the third. Which isn't supposed to exist on the Venova, and is terribly out of tune on that instrument but anyhow.
Between work and trying to get more exercise and of course trying to get as many words on the page as possible I've had little time for practice, much less for composition.
Maybe that's why more music is slipping into the novel. It started as most things do in Discovery Writing. I wanted to do a take on a story I heard about Army musicians in Italy during World War II sneaking off base past the watchful MP's by pretending to be Italian. So I gave my character a little band geek background.
Turns out many of the fun musical terms that fit the scene (sound like language, are less known as musical terms, etc.) are the variety of bowing terms for the strings. And since I know a bit about violin myself...
Well, one thing led to another. I read a couple of accounts of a woman who survived in the water after falling off a cruise ship; she had kept her spirits up by singing show tunes. Given that my protagonist was in High School theater, she must have done a few musicals. So can at least sing a little. So again one thing led to another and she's singing in quite a few places now.
Plus there was already a scene planned (I started writing that one today) where a couple characters talk about some famous opera arias. No, my MC isn't singing any of those.
So at some point I'd like to revisit the thought about how experience on one instrument can help with another. I've realized it didn't, for me, start with the recorder. It started with whistling. I got used to breath control, shaping of the oral cavity for tone and pitch (which is necessary for trumpet), and a number of extended techniques; tonguing, vibrato and tremolo (don't get me started on that particular nomenclatural quagmire!)
Those translated to recorder, which adds overblowing and of course fingering. To which I added the extended techniques of diaphragm vibrato, flutter tongue, and chanter fingering. Which helped towards the faster fingering and accents of penny whistle, which also adds a more focused overblow to the necessary techniques.
The Venova isn't a Boem system woodwind. It is fingered like a recorder. So what it adds to the mix is embouchure and general reed control, as well as the care and feeding of reeds (Rico Select 2.0 for the moment).
I still want a practice space. Even better than that, more understanding neighbors so I could just pull out an instrument any time I felt like it and blow a few licks. Well...I guess my current neighborhood is a good excuse to get the new uke out of the case and spend more time with that.
Now that I've figured out how the embouchure is supposed to work I got a lot better at the Venova, fast. Lower two octaves more-or-less clean and with concentration I can get through the top of the second and into the third. Which isn't supposed to exist on the Venova, and is terribly out of tune on that instrument but anyhow.
Between work and trying to get more exercise and of course trying to get as many words on the page as possible I've had little time for practice, much less for composition.
Maybe that's why more music is slipping into the novel. It started as most things do in Discovery Writing. I wanted to do a take on a story I heard about Army musicians in Italy during World War II sneaking off base past the watchful MP's by pretending to be Italian. So I gave my character a little band geek background.
Turns out many of the fun musical terms that fit the scene (sound like language, are less known as musical terms, etc.) are the variety of bowing terms for the strings. And since I know a bit about violin myself...
Well, one thing led to another. I read a couple of accounts of a woman who survived in the water after falling off a cruise ship; she had kept her spirits up by singing show tunes. Given that my protagonist was in High School theater, she must have done a few musicals. So can at least sing a little. So again one thing led to another and she's singing in quite a few places now.
Plus there was already a scene planned (I started writing that one today) where a couple characters talk about some famous opera arias. No, my MC isn't singing any of those.
* * *
So at some point I'd like to revisit the thought about how experience on one instrument can help with another. I've realized it didn't, for me, start with the recorder. It started with whistling. I got used to breath control, shaping of the oral cavity for tone and pitch (which is necessary for trumpet), and a number of extended techniques; tonguing, vibrato and tremolo (don't get me started on that particular nomenclatural quagmire!)
Those translated to recorder, which adds overblowing and of course fingering. To which I added the extended techniques of diaphragm vibrato, flutter tongue, and chanter fingering. Which helped towards the faster fingering and accents of penny whistle, which also adds a more focused overblow to the necessary techniques.
The Venova isn't a Boem system woodwind. It is fingered like a recorder. So what it adds to the mix is embouchure and general reed control, as well as the care and feeding of reeds (Rico Select 2.0 for the moment).
I still want a practice space. Even better than that, more understanding neighbors so I could just pull out an instrument any time I felt like it and blow a few licks. Well...I guess my current neighborhood is a good excuse to get the new uke out of the case and spend more time with that.
Monday, July 15, 2019
Water Course
Amazing what you can research. Which cruise ships are in harbor at a particular place on a particular date, for instance (Cruise Tracker). On the other hand, finding the particulars on a ferry turn out to be rather ugly; the only search results that come up are to sell you a ticket and as I discovered myself going to Crete, the terminal, name of the vessel, size and class, route, or any detail about the accommodations is not there either. You get a lot more detail if you reserve a hotel.
Problem was, I couldn't write the Venice chapter until I knew what time she got on the ferry. And I couldn't nail that down until I figured out what time she needed to get off the ferry.
And I really don't know small boats well enough. Had to try to figure out what the smugglers have, what its range is, what their likely top speed is without wrecking engine, hull, and going through the fuel like nobody's business.
Finally was able to put together a range of numbers that all seemed to work together. Does require several hours fudging in various directions but it isn't completely implausible. The only ferry I was able to confirm (this year) leaves at the unholy time of 0430, but between the travel sites claiming "midnight" and the option within the text of saying "left after midnight" I can pretty much settle down to a 10 PM boarding time Which pretty much kills a scene I had planned. Oh well.
Now I'm moving on to changing geography. The current most-sensible sequence is to go to St. Mark's first, hang out with a street singer, run into a pick-pocket. Of course the perfect spot I found on the map for that incident is northeast of the train station; pretty much the way she'd be traveling to go to the piazza. And it makes most sense if it is after lunch because that gives a chance for another character to find her among the 600,000 other tourists. But I also found a couple of very cute places that are north of the piazza (there's only one in Venice; technically the others are campo).
And so it goes. Especially because I just added to the chase and it would help to have at least a campo to end it in.
Problem was, I couldn't write the Venice chapter until I knew what time she got on the ferry. And I couldn't nail that down until I figured out what time she needed to get off the ferry.
And I really don't know small boats well enough. Had to try to figure out what the smugglers have, what its range is, what their likely top speed is without wrecking engine, hull, and going through the fuel like nobody's business.
Finally was able to put together a range of numbers that all seemed to work together. Does require several hours fudging in various directions but it isn't completely implausible. The only ferry I was able to confirm (this year) leaves at the unholy time of 0430, but between the travel sites claiming "midnight" and the option within the text of saying "left after midnight" I can pretty much settle down to a 10 PM boarding time Which pretty much kills a scene I had planned. Oh well.
Now I'm moving on to changing geography. The current most-sensible sequence is to go to St. Mark's first, hang out with a street singer, run into a pick-pocket. Of course the perfect spot I found on the map for that incident is northeast of the train station; pretty much the way she'd be traveling to go to the piazza. And it makes most sense if it is after lunch because that gives a chance for another character to find her among the 600,000 other tourists. But I also found a couple of very cute places that are north of the piazza (there's only one in Venice; technically the others are campo).
And so it goes. Especially because I just added to the chase and it would help to have at least a campo to end it in.
Thursday, July 11, 2019
Making a splash
I want to change history.
Of course I do. The last "novel" was set nebulously in the vicinity of 2001. This one is in 2018, which is a lot easier to research; unless there is good reason to go otherwise I can use current information for rail lines and so forth.
So I got lucky with some early numbers. The medieval street fair I went to in Rhineland/Palatinate is still ongoing as of 2018, and it happens the same weekend that Oktoberfest opens in München. Unfortunately that means by the time I get to Verona, the Arena has closed their last performance for the season (it was an Italian pop singer, if you want to know).
But Venice. So there was the Regata Storica on Sept 2nd. That's a bunch of races preceded by a parade of historical boats. Then there's a big film festival. And then there's the Acqua alta of 2018; the biggest and nastiest flood tide since 1966. But it didn't happen, historically, until Oct 29.
I mentioned wasting some time trying to figure out when you got a good snow cover along the route of the rail connection from München to Verona. Well, I found a video taken in Brenner Pass in early September of 2018 that showed snow, so that's good enough for me. Because the point isn't getting it exact, it is getting it within the ballpark of what is reasonable and expected for that place, that season, etc.
The precise timing of the acqua alta is up to the vagaries of (large-scale) weather and tides. There is no strong hydrologic reason why it couldn't happen in September. In fact, my protagonist arrives in Venice on or just after the Full Moon. So as in the Brenner Pass example above I'd be entirely justified to have puddles in the Piazza San Marco.
What I can't do -- at least, not lightly -- is move the historically significant October event. Not unless it was really, really key to the plot of the story.
There's a last point here. It strains coincidence when your characters just happen to arrive in Rio in time for Carnaval and at Houston just in time for a launch. The real travel experience is that the great exhibit was last week and you can't wait long enough for the duck season to start and you are always somehow in the wrong town at the wrong time. But this story takes place in a not completely realistic universe. My protagonist will happen on more than her fair share of interesting things, from a film festival to a riot.
And, yeah, at the climax the Olympias will row in, despite being a full ten years too late.
But all is not lost. The very much real-world medicane "Xenephon" swept into Athens the very weekend my protagonist will be concluding her adventure. I hadn't planned anything to do with a storm. But I'm sure not going to turn one down...
Of course I do. The last "novel" was set nebulously in the vicinity of 2001. This one is in 2018, which is a lot easier to research; unless there is good reason to go otherwise I can use current information for rail lines and so forth.
So I got lucky with some early numbers. The medieval street fair I went to in Rhineland/Palatinate is still ongoing as of 2018, and it happens the same weekend that Oktoberfest opens in München. Unfortunately that means by the time I get to Verona, the Arena has closed their last performance for the season (it was an Italian pop singer, if you want to know).
But Venice. So there was the Regata Storica on Sept 2nd. That's a bunch of races preceded by a parade of historical boats. Then there's a big film festival. And then there's the Acqua alta of 2018; the biggest and nastiest flood tide since 1966. But it didn't happen, historically, until Oct 29.
I mentioned wasting some time trying to figure out when you got a good snow cover along the route of the rail connection from München to Verona. Well, I found a video taken in Brenner Pass in early September of 2018 that showed snow, so that's good enough for me. Because the point isn't getting it exact, it is getting it within the ballpark of what is reasonable and expected for that place, that season, etc.
The precise timing of the acqua alta is up to the vagaries of (large-scale) weather and tides. There is no strong hydrologic reason why it couldn't happen in September. In fact, my protagonist arrives in Venice on or just after the Full Moon. So as in the Brenner Pass example above I'd be entirely justified to have puddles in the Piazza San Marco.
What I can't do -- at least, not lightly -- is move the historically significant October event. Not unless it was really, really key to the plot of the story.
There's a last point here. It strains coincidence when your characters just happen to arrive in Rio in time for Carnaval and at Houston just in time for a launch. The real travel experience is that the great exhibit was last week and you can't wait long enough for the duck season to start and you are always somehow in the wrong town at the wrong time. But this story takes place in a not completely realistic universe. My protagonist will happen on more than her fair share of interesting things, from a film festival to a riot.
And, yeah, at the climax the Olympias will row in, despite being a full ten years too late.
But all is not lost. The very much real-world medicane "Xenephon" swept into Athens the very weekend my protagonist will be concluding her adventure. I hadn't planned anything to do with a storm. But I'm sure not going to turn one down...
Wednesday, July 10, 2019
Dusted
Trying to do that 1,000 words a day. I'd still like to be that productive but hitting a daily average is maybe not the best measure. Even if Scrivener does have some cute session and document target tracking tools.
I think of the time I spent building sets for theatre. Doing drafting and cutting pieces of wood for days. Assembling raw flats and platforms (because you need a lot of those) for weeks. Base them and turn them over to Scenic for painting. Then the day you start trucking the stuff over to the theater and start assembling it on stage, people are coming around with "You guys did a lot of work today."
So, yeah. I threw down a 1,400 word scene that included a lyrical description of a train ride through the Italian Alps (based largely on a single video I saw.) And then had to stop for two days; first to figure out if I was even on the right route. Then to find out what the weather was actually like in Brennen Pass at the time of year I'd set the scene in. The revision gained me another 200 so it wasn't all loss.
Discovery writing is always a bit give and take. I was planning on going directly to Padua, but I felt like putting another obstacle in. Verona was on the way. What do they have? Well, there's "Casa di Giulietta." The scene wrote itself. Verona also seemed to offer some opportunities; there's the Jewish Quarter of the central (old) city. A German synagogue that's been turned into a museum and some Jewish cemeteries. So I made a rough draft of the scene. But turns out both of the latter are off route for the natural path from railway station to my chosen osteria. So review and re-draft.
Plus I was sick today. Wrote anyhow...but when I hit the target, I stopped. So there's that, too.
I'm constrained in the Italy sequence in that it is really time to get back to Greece and the real focus of the story. Also, I've made the point of those first clumsy days of learning how to travel and there's no more need to do blow-by-blow. But that's turning out to be weird to accomplish.
See, I've been doing first-person immediate. That means that the only text that can appear on the page is what the character is actually thinking more-or-less contemporary with the action being presented. That's why the narration can't say, out of the blue, "I got maths degree at Oxford." Instead there has to be a trigger, say a couple of students singing the ribald University of Padua graduation song, so the narration can describe that and go on, "...we didn't have anything like that at Oxford."
I have several places where I want to go back and shift more things to dialog, where it is more natural anyhow.
In the same sense of discovery writing, I needed to show her texting a friend back home in one scene in order to get a clue to a third party. One thing led to another and that off-stage character has basically become a confidante. Someone my protagonist can dialog things to instead of narrating them in her head.
Another constraint is that I've already done the whole "learning to communicate" routine with German. I don't need and don't want to do Italian as well. So I'm forced to skip over, paper over, and otherwise leave a lot of stuff off stage. Just like I'm doing for finding directions, learning when and where to eat, and all that other good stuff. The theme for this sequence is, "Being a somewhat experienced traveler."
Not to say she shouldn't still make mistakes. In fact, I've decided she needs to make more. So another thing to go back and edit in. Have more of her stunts fail, and take things further; have her get actively embarrassed, have that sort of tongue-tied language meltdown you get when you are riding on half-remembered lessons and instinct and it fails you. Etc.
Oddly enough this is a lot less work than it sounds. The hard part was blocking the scenes and the general flow of dialog. I can give it a different spin in a lot less time.
So I spent the last half of my sick day watching videos from Dust. And more travel videos. I've done all I need to for Verona and the Padova sequence is almost entirely a conversation between two people having a meal at the Osteria l'Anfora.
I should add I can do that sort of thing (using videos and TripAdvisor entries and Google Maps and Frommer's) because I've actually been to Europe; to Athens and Paris and Berlin and Salzburg and more than a few smaller towns as well. So I can see what's not always there, like trash and tourists and weather, and fill in some of the sensory details like walking on cobblestones, and otherwise sanity check what I'm being shown.
I think of the time I spent building sets for theatre. Doing drafting and cutting pieces of wood for days. Assembling raw flats and platforms (because you need a lot of those) for weeks. Base them and turn them over to Scenic for painting. Then the day you start trucking the stuff over to the theater and start assembling it on stage, people are coming around with "You guys did a lot of work today."
So, yeah. I threw down a 1,400 word scene that included a lyrical description of a train ride through the Italian Alps (based largely on a single video I saw.) And then had to stop for two days; first to figure out if I was even on the right route. Then to find out what the weather was actually like in Brennen Pass at the time of year I'd set the scene in. The revision gained me another 200 so it wasn't all loss.
Discovery writing is always a bit give and take. I was planning on going directly to Padua, but I felt like putting another obstacle in. Verona was on the way. What do they have? Well, there's "Casa di Giulietta." The scene wrote itself. Verona also seemed to offer some opportunities; there's the Jewish Quarter of the central (old) city. A German synagogue that's been turned into a museum and some Jewish cemeteries. So I made a rough draft of the scene. But turns out both of the latter are off route for the natural path from railway station to my chosen osteria. So review and re-draft.
Plus I was sick today. Wrote anyhow...but when I hit the target, I stopped. So there's that, too.
I'm constrained in the Italy sequence in that it is really time to get back to Greece and the real focus of the story. Also, I've made the point of those first clumsy days of learning how to travel and there's no more need to do blow-by-blow. But that's turning out to be weird to accomplish.
See, I've been doing first-person immediate. That means that the only text that can appear on the page is what the character is actually thinking more-or-less contemporary with the action being presented. That's why the narration can't say, out of the blue, "I got maths degree at Oxford." Instead there has to be a trigger, say a couple of students singing the ribald University of Padua graduation song, so the narration can describe that and go on, "...we didn't have anything like that at Oxford."
I have several places where I want to go back and shift more things to dialog, where it is more natural anyhow.
In the same sense of discovery writing, I needed to show her texting a friend back home in one scene in order to get a clue to a third party. One thing led to another and that off-stage character has basically become a confidante. Someone my protagonist can dialog things to instead of narrating them in her head.
Another constraint is that I've already done the whole "learning to communicate" routine with German. I don't need and don't want to do Italian as well. So I'm forced to skip over, paper over, and otherwise leave a lot of stuff off stage. Just like I'm doing for finding directions, learning when and where to eat, and all that other good stuff. The theme for this sequence is, "Being a somewhat experienced traveler."
Not to say she shouldn't still make mistakes. In fact, I've decided she needs to make more. So another thing to go back and edit in. Have more of her stunts fail, and take things further; have her get actively embarrassed, have that sort of tongue-tied language meltdown you get when you are riding on half-remembered lessons and instinct and it fails you. Etc.
Oddly enough this is a lot less work than it sounds. The hard part was blocking the scenes and the general flow of dialog. I can give it a different spin in a lot less time.
So I spent the last half of my sick day watching videos from Dust. And more travel videos. I've done all I need to for Verona and the Padova sequence is almost entirely a conversation between two people having a meal at the Osteria l'Anfora.
I should add I can do that sort of thing (using videos and TripAdvisor entries and Google Maps and Frommer's) because I've actually been to Europe; to Athens and Paris and Berlin and Salzburg and more than a few smaller towns as well. So I can see what's not always there, like trash and tourists and weather, and fill in some of the sensory details like walking on cobblestones, and otherwise sanity check what I'm being shown.
Sunday, July 7, 2019
Raiders of the Lost Arc
I dream of a well-plotted story.
Of a single powerful character arc that explores the theme, sets out objective and objection in a clear contest, and resolves in a solid climax. Whether it is the Campbellian mono-myth, a three-act (explain, develop, resolve), a boy-meets-girl or one of the Aristotelian lyric frameworks, that's what I want to write.
And I love a strong climax where all the preparation work comes together. For all the places it went wrong and all the side plots that in too many cases distracted from the main theme, at the core of the Captain Marvel movie is "Vers" slowly discovering who she had been. At the climax, the Supreme Intelligence once again forces her to re-live scraps of memory; all the times Carole Danvers had tried, failed, fallen. "Without us, you're only human." This is a theme that the Kree had been hammering over and over; weakness, emotion, dependence on them for any semblance of control over her powers, and they had shown these failures to her many times before.
But this time Carole has her full memories back. She rolls the tape forward. Each and every time, the child, the teen, the cadet had gotten back up.
So she gets back up. And shows the Supreme Intelligence just what "only human" can do.
Of a single powerful character arc that explores the theme, sets out objective and objection in a clear contest, and resolves in a solid climax. Whether it is the Campbellian mono-myth, a three-act (explain, develop, resolve), a boy-meets-girl or one of the Aristotelian lyric frameworks, that's what I want to write.
And I love a strong climax where all the preparation work comes together. For all the places it went wrong and all the side plots that in too many cases distracted from the main theme, at the core of the Captain Marvel movie is "Vers" slowly discovering who she had been. At the climax, the Supreme Intelligence once again forces her to re-live scraps of memory; all the times Carole Danvers had tried, failed, fallen. "Without us, you're only human." This is a theme that the Kree had been hammering over and over; weakness, emotion, dependence on them for any semblance of control over her powers, and they had shown these failures to her many times before.
But this time Carole has her full memories back. She rolls the tape forward. Each and every time, the child, the teen, the cadet had gotten back up.
So she gets back up. And shows the Supreme Intelligence just what "only human" can do.
I love moments like this. I love pushing a character down to their lowest point, then...
Well, I don't have it on this story. What I've got is more a romp, a travel tale through interesting scenery meeting interesting people. There's a dramatic arc but it is muted.
Out of all the ways I could have approached that first germ of an idea (a fake archaeologist to both take part in and to deconstruct fake archaeology) this was probably the weakest. My other ideas was either an actor who discovers the joy in real science, or a scientist who is pulled into a world of pretend science.
Or maybe this was the wrong story for this character. Throwing her into the deep end might have been better. Instead this is a slower origin story as she is given space to develop into the necessary skills. Instead of conflict, it is embrace. Instead of the climactic moment being, "This role is a lie!" it is, instead, "So you thought I was just a fake."
Finished the Germany sequence with a day left in the four-day weekend. Unfortunately have to do a wee bit of research before I can really launch into the Italy chapters. Well, still got a thousand words down before I had to take a break. Bringing the running total to 36K out of a revised target of 70K minimum. If I cross 70K I may start editing stuff out, see how much I can streamline.
If it continued at that pace I could have draft done in another month. Wouldn't that be cool? There's so many books I'd love to write, if I could just write a little faster, a little more efficiently...
Now at 1,500 and the train just stopped in Verona. And I'm being sad about the stuff I had to leave out. The white powder people sniff at Oktoberfest. The other surprising pop hits sung there. The wonderful old merry-go-round. How they say good morning without the rising tone, just barking out "Morgan!" as if angry. All the breads. The foods. The work ethic. Rhine castles and Rhine boats. Ah, well. I'll just have to write another book and send her to Berlin.
Friday, July 5, 2019
Delayed festivities
There's a story from the filming of Marathon Man. Dustin Hoffman went for 72 hours without sleep to get into the right emotional frame for his character. "My dear boy," co-star Laurence Olivier told him, "Why don't you just try acting?"
I'm going to my home town's little Fourth of July festival in another hour. It's a dry festival, and besides, I'm driving. But I really, really want a beer right now.
So that's helping me get in the right mood for the big Oktoberfest chapter.
My protagonist wants to get drunk and party. And as least I can get behind the drinking part. A little. I'm really having trouble connecting with the party part. She's not going to shy away from crowds. She has very little social awkwardness or nervousness. And that's not me.
I've talked about the default protagonist. Us writers tend to be bookish, wallflowers, even agoraphobic. If I was in Munich I'd be going to the quieter tents and checking out the history and drinking ONE beer (they are really big beers, though.) Maybe first-person POV makes it even harder. I have to keep stopping, backing up, and asking, "Is this how Penny would react, or is this me speaking."
So she's a tough character for me to get inside the head of. I'm also still reacting to some all too common tropes. And this is a chapter where I'm having to confront one of the common lies.
See, protagonists tend to be good looking. Nothing wrong with that. But society doesn't like the good people to be aware that they are good looking. On a male protagonist, you'll get phrases like "roguishly handsome." It isn't an entirely positive description. On a female...the first label that pops up is vain. The work-arounds for this conundrum tends to be that he or she hasn't had the chance to realize they are good looking ("He cleans up nicely"), that their looks are unusual in some specific way that is totally unacceptable to the fictional society (but in the reader's culture hot as hell; "They hated me because of my long red hair and emerald green eyes"). And then there's naive. Which is okay for the guys maybe but on the girls, well...there's a big ick factor there is all I can say.
Or he or she is good looking and doesn't care. And she's "not like the other girls" which means she doesn't use chapstick or own a razor (because all that "primping" is something only vamps and bad girls and stuck-up cheerleaders do, not our heroine thank you very much.) And, yes, they are right about that. They aren't like other girls. Because psychologically and physiologically, that particular description isn't even human,
But, hell, we accept out-of-the-norm physiology ("Anyone else would have drowned down there,") and a ludicrous inability to accept their own strengths ("Just because I defeated Ragnock the Mighty doesn't mean I'm some great fighter!") So maybe we can accept a protagonist who by accident of biology just happens to look like she just left her stylist, and yet somehow has never twigged to this fact.
Yeah, no. Penny is still buying a dirndl bra (she may not actually mention it, but she knows and I know...)
I'm not really fond of first person. Most of my writing has been in third person POV. Last time I did first was Samantha Nishimura, who was a lot easier to work with than Penny. Sam swears a streak, but more than anything else she likes the sound of her voice; she's very aware of narrating, in love with her own cleverness, and perfectly happy explaining things to the reader.
For Penny I'm trying to give more of an illusion of a running dictation, as if the events are in the process of happening and Penny doesn't know any more than the reader does what happens next.
Another thing is that Sam had these glorious mood swings. When she had an emotional reaction she committed to it. Penny is almost relentlessly up. And her entire default approach is anthropological. Observe, move only when necessary, form tentative hypothesis and don't be surprised or upset when it fails.
She makes a lot of mistakes. But she doesn't dwell on them. Instead of beating herself up she moves on. So unless the reader is really paying attention they don't even notice the correction. Maybe this is something else I have to consciously change. Make her less separated, less an observer in her own skull, and more participant. Because the more she is involved in what is happening, the more the reader will be.
The last thing that's current kicking me is the German Language. Well, that and culture. This is very much intended as a tourist-eye view. It is a basic theme in this book; of learning to travel and of first encountering a culture as a tourist does, then, if you are lucky and focused, getting an opportunity to go a little deeper.
Of course the way this plotted out, a lot of the practical stuff I learned as a tourist and would like to touch on is getting skipped. She hasn't even experienced Frühstück. The only hotel she's been close to was off-screen.
Language, however. My interest, like her interest, is anthropological. It isn't so much about learning German, it is learning about German. I'm in the scene where people want to talk about how the Bayern dialect is so different (the simple version; in Germany proper there is a Hochdeutsch -- also referred to as the standarddeutsch -- which functions like British RP; it is the language of the schools and the broadcasters and business. Then you have regional dialects, most of which have connotations similar to regional dialects in the US; "deep south," "hillbilly," "Jersey," etc.)
This isn't some technical thing that only frazzle-hair linguists will get excited by. If you sing the "Prosit," you might be tempted to sing "Eins, zwei, drei" the way I did in school. The locals, and any experienced Weisn hand, will pronounce it more like "oans, zwoa..."
And it isn't just accent; there are significant word changes and even some grammatical shifts. Thing is, the Prosit gets sung every fifteen minutes -- the subject of how to pronounce it will come around more often than the next maß.
But outside of that...yeah, although Penny wants to ask and locals would love to share, she, I, and especially the reader don't know enough to understand these distinctions. My academic friend at the pub once tried to show me the clearly distinct ways verbs are conjugated in Ionic and Doric. Thing is...I can't even read Greek letters. So that lesson was utterly lost on me...
I'm going to my home town's little Fourth of July festival in another hour. It's a dry festival, and besides, I'm driving. But I really, really want a beer right now.
So that's helping me get in the right mood for the big Oktoberfest chapter.
My protagonist wants to get drunk and party. And as least I can get behind the drinking part. A little. I'm really having trouble connecting with the party part. She's not going to shy away from crowds. She has very little social awkwardness or nervousness. And that's not me.
I've talked about the default protagonist. Us writers tend to be bookish, wallflowers, even agoraphobic. If I was in Munich I'd be going to the quieter tents and checking out the history and drinking ONE beer (they are really big beers, though.) Maybe first-person POV makes it even harder. I have to keep stopping, backing up, and asking, "Is this how Penny would react, or is this me speaking."
See, protagonists tend to be good looking. Nothing wrong with that. But society doesn't like the good people to be aware that they are good looking. On a male protagonist, you'll get phrases like "roguishly handsome." It isn't an entirely positive description. On a female...the first label that pops up is vain. The work-arounds for this conundrum tends to be that he or she hasn't had the chance to realize they are good looking ("He cleans up nicely"), that their looks are unusual in some specific way that is totally unacceptable to the fictional society (but in the reader's culture hot as hell; "They hated me because of my long red hair and emerald green eyes"). And then there's naive. Which is okay for the guys maybe but on the girls, well...there's a big ick factor there is all I can say.
Or he or she is good looking and doesn't care. And she's "not like the other girls" which means she doesn't use chapstick or own a razor (because all that "primping" is something only vamps and bad girls and stuck-up cheerleaders do, not our heroine thank you very much.) And, yes, they are right about that. They aren't like other girls. Because psychologically and physiologically, that particular description isn't even human,
But, hell, we accept out-of-the-norm physiology ("Anyone else would have drowned down there,") and a ludicrous inability to accept their own strengths ("Just because I defeated Ragnock the Mighty doesn't mean I'm some great fighter!") So maybe we can accept a protagonist who by accident of biology just happens to look like she just left her stylist, and yet somehow has never twigged to this fact.
Yeah, no. Penny is still buying a dirndl bra (she may not actually mention it, but she knows and I know...)
I'm not really fond of first person. Most of my writing has been in third person POV. Last time I did first was Samantha Nishimura, who was a lot easier to work with than Penny. Sam swears a streak, but more than anything else she likes the sound of her voice; she's very aware of narrating, in love with her own cleverness, and perfectly happy explaining things to the reader.
For Penny I'm trying to give more of an illusion of a running dictation, as if the events are in the process of happening and Penny doesn't know any more than the reader does what happens next.
Another thing is that Sam had these glorious mood swings. When she had an emotional reaction she committed to it. Penny is almost relentlessly up. And her entire default approach is anthropological. Observe, move only when necessary, form tentative hypothesis and don't be surprised or upset when it fails.
She makes a lot of mistakes. But she doesn't dwell on them. Instead of beating herself up she moves on. So unless the reader is really paying attention they don't even notice the correction. Maybe this is something else I have to consciously change. Make her less separated, less an observer in her own skull, and more participant. Because the more she is involved in what is happening, the more the reader will be.
The last thing that's current kicking me is the German Language. Well, that and culture. This is very much intended as a tourist-eye view. It is a basic theme in this book; of learning to travel and of first encountering a culture as a tourist does, then, if you are lucky and focused, getting an opportunity to go a little deeper.
Of course the way this plotted out, a lot of the practical stuff I learned as a tourist and would like to touch on is getting skipped. She hasn't even experienced Frühstück. The only hotel she's been close to was off-screen.
Language, however. My interest, like her interest, is anthropological. It isn't so much about learning German, it is learning about German. I'm in the scene where people want to talk about how the Bayern dialect is so different (the simple version; in Germany proper there is a Hochdeutsch -- also referred to as the standarddeutsch -- which functions like British RP; it is the language of the schools and the broadcasters and business. Then you have regional dialects, most of which have connotations similar to regional dialects in the US; "deep south," "hillbilly," "Jersey," etc.)
This isn't some technical thing that only frazzle-hair linguists will get excited by. If you sing the "Prosit," you might be tempted to sing "Eins, zwei, drei" the way I did in school. The locals, and any experienced Weisn hand, will pronounce it more like "oans, zwoa..."
And it isn't just accent; there are significant word changes and even some grammatical shifts. Thing is, the Prosit gets sung every fifteen minutes -- the subject of how to pronounce it will come around more often than the next maß.
But outside of that...yeah, although Penny wants to ask and locals would love to share, she, I, and especially the reader don't know enough to understand these distinctions. My academic friend at the pub once tried to show me the clearly distinct ways verbs are conjugated in Ionic and Doric. Thing is...I can't even read Greek letters. So that lesson was utterly lost on me...
Wednesday, July 3, 2019
Panzer vor
A week ago the idea of learning enough about Oktoberfest Munich to fake the experience in print was overwhelming. Well, having now read and watched a lot of material, from tourist videos to Deutsche-Welle articles to the Sichere Wiesn website, I feel like I have a grasp of it. Now I have a different problem.
The thing you are reaching for is a gestalt, a sort of feeling. But getting there is usually through accumulation of detail. So by the time you are able to sketch the idea of Oktoberfest in a single sentence, you've also collected oh so many wonderful little details, from opinionated mechanical lions to the exact words of "Ein Prosit" in the proper Bayern dialect. And there is too much temptation to use them. Not all, just one or two of the best. Or three. Or four...
I'm a pantser by inclination. Or "panzer," if you chose the amusingly appropriate spelling one writer used in a recent thread. Right now I think that it doesn't matter when you are starting out. It doesn't matter whether you try to outline meticulously or pants it all; you don't have the experience to know how to pace and time and control sub-plots and construct arcs and all that. It takes time and writing to develop those instincts. Without them your seat-of-pants text will go into cul-de-sacs, but without them your outline, no matter how meticulous, will fail to account for the actual needs of the text. In short both approaches will fail.
I'm actually at the worst of both worlds on the current one. I went for a slim outline, and it is proving both slim where I needed more information, and also wrong when I had that information in it. The strongest parts of the story (or at least the ones that are exciting me most at the moment) were entirely discovery writing. At least the underlying framework was sound.
But to go back to research. Munich was not on the outline. I found it when I started to detail the Germany chapters. To have it in the outline I would have had to research not just Germany but five or six other nations to that level first before I was able to narrow it down. So...panzer vor?
The other thing about the panzer approach is after you've driven half-way across Europe you look back and it looks like that was the only logical approach. I have the framework plot for the Munich sequence and it makes so much sense from where I am it is hard to step back and try to consider other options. Plus I kind of want to get text on the page. One good thing about the experience of this particular story is I'm finding it easier and easier to edit. Edit dramatically.
So I tried to pants the Munich sequence and 500 words later I'd just finished describing a dirndl. So I need more outline than that. I'm also still a little on edge about the climax and ending sequence. Thing is, it all unfolds so logically, from the medicinal usage of MAOI to food interactions to resulting symptoms, to the string of events that ends with her singing to the sick in the Red Cross tents. The first part of that, of course, has far too great a chance of going really creepy. And the last is equally um, but in a different direction.
Because there's a built-in Mary Sue problem. See, this is sort of a Tomb Raider origin story. The larger-than-life hero in question is entirely fictional, but my protagonist is tasked with trying to fill her boots. The fact that she sometimes succeeds requires she has some formidable skills of her own already. The fact that she isn't already this alter-ego means she has to have that oh-so-typical misplaced lack of confidence. Or that the world has already decided she is The Chosen One and is going to let her get away with shit. Neither option is particularly palatable.
I'm unwilling to make this Discworld where "Narrative causality" can overturn physics. The best leverage I have to make the unlikely happen is to populate the narrative with characters who either think or want to believe or for various nefarious reasons are going to pretend that Indiana Jones stunts actually work in the real world. (And I mean both the cliff-diving and the slapdash approach to archaeology.)
Fortunately, the way I'm playing this dance between Penny and the character she portrays, I can have people and physics both jump out at intervals to lecture her on how much she doesn't measure up. But all in all, I still haven't found a way to make the trick really work narratively. Not, at least, in the way I structured this particular book.
I tried creating a divide between the roles, where Penny almost has to henshin to this powered-up form that then solves all her problems for her. But this dangerously detached all the action from the actual protagonist. Which you could have some psychological fun with, but ultimately wasn't satisfying for this story.
And actually I'm not bothered by having her a decent singer. She's had a checkered past, she admits at one point. Somehow more music is showing up in this than I expected but it is a different direction to go. I'm still resisting having her react to everything like a theatre geek, even if she has claimed "acting experience" a couple of times so far in the narrative.
What bugs me is this is the sort of thing too-good heroes do. They rescue cats from trees and comfort orphans because they are just that good. And sure I can lampshade the hell out of it but, still...
The other thing I've been doing over the past couple days is learning about dialects in German. Okay, make that "being exposed to different dialects in German" because it is horribly complicated and well beyond my experience with the language to make any real sense of. It does tell me that some of the directions I was going with Herr Satz are probably wrong. Amusingly enough, to my ear the dialect spoken in the Berlin area has a bit of Noo Yawkese. The Bayern is a bit country bumpkin. How they actually map to the German ear and German experience, on the other hand...well, it is something I don't think I can navigate on my own.
It works fine for Satz to have a Berliner accent, or even one from further North (I was thinking of him being from Lübeck). But I have no easy words for the arch, aristocratic accent he's putting on. Maybe it doesn't exist in German. Maybe he's doing a British Music Hall impression of a German accent. Penny is going around calling it "Prussian" -- but only in her head.
The thing you are reaching for is a gestalt, a sort of feeling. But getting there is usually through accumulation of detail. So by the time you are able to sketch the idea of Oktoberfest in a single sentence, you've also collected oh so many wonderful little details, from opinionated mechanical lions to the exact words of "Ein Prosit" in the proper Bayern dialect. And there is too much temptation to use them. Not all, just one or two of the best. Or three. Or four...
* * *
I'm a pantser by inclination. Or "panzer," if you chose the amusingly appropriate spelling one writer used in a recent thread. Right now I think that it doesn't matter when you are starting out. It doesn't matter whether you try to outline meticulously or pants it all; you don't have the experience to know how to pace and time and control sub-plots and construct arcs and all that. It takes time and writing to develop those instincts. Without them your seat-of-pants text will go into cul-de-sacs, but without them your outline, no matter how meticulous, will fail to account for the actual needs of the text. In short both approaches will fail.
I'm actually at the worst of both worlds on the current one. I went for a slim outline, and it is proving both slim where I needed more information, and also wrong when I had that information in it. The strongest parts of the story (or at least the ones that are exciting me most at the moment) were entirely discovery writing. At least the underlying framework was sound.
But to go back to research. Munich was not on the outline. I found it when I started to detail the Germany chapters. To have it in the outline I would have had to research not just Germany but five or six other nations to that level first before I was able to narrow it down. So...panzer vor?
* * *
The other thing about the panzer approach is after you've driven half-way across Europe you look back and it looks like that was the only logical approach. I have the framework plot for the Munich sequence and it makes so much sense from where I am it is hard to step back and try to consider other options. Plus I kind of want to get text on the page. One good thing about the experience of this particular story is I'm finding it easier and easier to edit. Edit dramatically.
So I tried to pants the Munich sequence and 500 words later I'd just finished describing a dirndl. So I need more outline than that. I'm also still a little on edge about the climax and ending sequence. Thing is, it all unfolds so logically, from the medicinal usage of MAOI to food interactions to resulting symptoms, to the string of events that ends with her singing to the sick in the Red Cross tents. The first part of that, of course, has far too great a chance of going really creepy. And the last is equally um, but in a different direction.
* * *
Because there's a built-in Mary Sue problem. See, this is sort of a Tomb Raider origin story. The larger-than-life hero in question is entirely fictional, but my protagonist is tasked with trying to fill her boots. The fact that she sometimes succeeds requires she has some formidable skills of her own already. The fact that she isn't already this alter-ego means she has to have that oh-so-typical misplaced lack of confidence. Or that the world has already decided she is The Chosen One and is going to let her get away with shit. Neither option is particularly palatable.
I'm unwilling to make this Discworld where "Narrative causality" can overturn physics. The best leverage I have to make the unlikely happen is to populate the narrative with characters who either think or want to believe or for various nefarious reasons are going to pretend that Indiana Jones stunts actually work in the real world. (And I mean both the cliff-diving and the slapdash approach to archaeology.)
Fortunately, the way I'm playing this dance between Penny and the character she portrays, I can have people and physics both jump out at intervals to lecture her on how much she doesn't measure up. But all in all, I still haven't found a way to make the trick really work narratively. Not, at least, in the way I structured this particular book.
I tried creating a divide between the roles, where Penny almost has to henshin to this powered-up form that then solves all her problems for her. But this dangerously detached all the action from the actual protagonist. Which you could have some psychological fun with, but ultimately wasn't satisfying for this story.
And actually I'm not bothered by having her a decent singer. She's had a checkered past, she admits at one point. Somehow more music is showing up in this than I expected but it is a different direction to go. I'm still resisting having her react to everything like a theatre geek, even if she has claimed "acting experience" a couple of times so far in the narrative.
What bugs me is this is the sort of thing too-good heroes do. They rescue cats from trees and comfort orphans because they are just that good. And sure I can lampshade the hell out of it but, still...
* * *
The other thing I've been doing over the past couple days is learning about dialects in German. Okay, make that "being exposed to different dialects in German" because it is horribly complicated and well beyond my experience with the language to make any real sense of. It does tell me that some of the directions I was going with Herr Satz are probably wrong. Amusingly enough, to my ear the dialect spoken in the Berlin area has a bit of Noo Yawkese. The Bayern is a bit country bumpkin. How they actually map to the German ear and German experience, on the other hand...well, it is something I don't think I can navigate on my own.
It works fine for Satz to have a Berliner accent, or even one from further North (I was thinking of him being from Lübeck). But I have no easy words for the arch, aristocratic accent he's putting on. Maybe it doesn't exist in German. Maybe he's doing a British Music Hall impression of a German accent. Penny is going around calling it "Prussian" -- but only in her head.
Monday, July 1, 2019
Research
Planning what will probably be the final Germany sequence in The Enceladus Calyx. This evening my research mostly consisted of watching YouTube videos about Oktoberfest while drinking Hofbräu.
Not, unfortunately, Löwenbräu -- or as at least one entity at Wiesn says, “Leewwwwvenbraaiiii!"
(Seriously, you have to hear this thing. It's fifteen feet tall, in the front of the Löwenbräu festzelt and sounds off at intervals.)
I've edited up to that point. Haven't done the big dialog pass I'm meaning to, but did tweak a bunch of lines so Penny's voice is more distinct, and is especially different from Athena Fox's. This story presents the same problem my Stargate/Tomb Raider fanfiction presented, which is a lot of places where someone needs to go into lecture mode. At least in this case, it is usually driven by their personality or the specific circumstances, not by the need of the author to info-dump. In any case it is hard to keep voices distinct during these.
(I mean, she's running into guides and opinionated history nerds and so forth and similar, and she's asking questions. So, sure, someone is going to go off on a ten-minute sidetrack about Roman coins.)
I reworked the scenes with "Herr Satz" and added him into earlier scenes to give him more presence in the story. I've also got Penny thinking about him more. I added more agency to most of her decisions, including her intention to confront Vash at Oktoberfest.
I am so glad I invented him. He entered the book as a walk-on character for one specific scene. The other thing in this particular round of edits is to move him to the front of the scenes he is in. I'm still regretting having the white power stuff show up at all. I think I've made it less of a wide brush and reduced the chance of turning into (or looking like it is turning into) polemic, and that is largely by re-casting the scenes so it is a known and specific character who speaks for them.
The Oktoberfest chapter is when I finally close a character and plot arc. And, yes, my desires for Rhine-Castles aside, it is the right place to close Part II and move on to Italy. Although there is a nice Egyptian museum in Munich that would be cool as a sort of getting back to history...
I just re-read the whole Germany sequence (sans final chapter) and it is really working for me. I’m feeling better about this story than I ever have before. Punching up the emotion, the emotional connections, the agency, and the characters did it.
Of course, I still have to figure out how the fetch quest that she undertook to get into Oktoberfest is actually going to work out. I’m not saying this last chapter will be easy. But I have confidence.
("...I have confidence in sunshine/ I have confidence in rain/ ..." Which was added to the film version of The Sound of Music, and brought back in to several stage productions following. That show is set in Austria but close enough...they're all Bavarians in Munich.)
Not, unfortunately, Löwenbräu -- or as at least one entity at Wiesn says, “Leewwwwvenbraaiiii!"
(Seriously, you have to hear this thing. It's fifteen feet tall, in the front of the Löwenbräu festzelt and sounds off at intervals.)
I've edited up to that point. Haven't done the big dialog pass I'm meaning to, but did tweak a bunch of lines so Penny's voice is more distinct, and is especially different from Athena Fox's. This story presents the same problem my Stargate/Tomb Raider fanfiction presented, which is a lot of places where someone needs to go into lecture mode. At least in this case, it is usually driven by their personality or the specific circumstances, not by the need of the author to info-dump. In any case it is hard to keep voices distinct during these.
(I mean, she's running into guides and opinionated history nerds and so forth and similar, and she's asking questions. So, sure, someone is going to go off on a ten-minute sidetrack about Roman coins.)
I reworked the scenes with "Herr Satz" and added him into earlier scenes to give him more presence in the story. I've also got Penny thinking about him more. I added more agency to most of her decisions, including her intention to confront Vash at Oktoberfest.
I am so glad I invented him. He entered the book as a walk-on character for one specific scene. The other thing in this particular round of edits is to move him to the front of the scenes he is in. I'm still regretting having the white power stuff show up at all. I think I've made it less of a wide brush and reduced the chance of turning into (or looking like it is turning into) polemic, and that is largely by re-casting the scenes so it is a known and specific character who speaks for them.
The Oktoberfest chapter is when I finally close a character and plot arc. And, yes, my desires for Rhine-Castles aside, it is the right place to close Part II and move on to Italy. Although there is a nice Egyptian museum in Munich that would be cool as a sort of getting back to history...
Of course, I still have to figure out how the fetch quest that she undertook to get into Oktoberfest is actually going to work out. I’m not saying this last chapter will be easy. But I have confidence.
("...I have confidence in sunshine/ I have confidence in rain/ ..." Which was added to the film version of The Sound of Music, and brought back in to several stage productions following. That show is set in Austria but close enough...they're all Bavarians in Munich.)
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