F, as in Johann Sebastian Bach

I got to the last page of grammar check. And then my dad turns in his notes.

Some of them are very dad notes. Which is to say they are the sort of thing I would have thought of, and worried endlessly about. The difference...the reason I have a book and he doesn't...is that I can after enough effort put them aside.

I have a "leg clad in lederhosen" at one moment and he worried about the fact that lederhosen only reach the knee. So is "leg" the right word, or should you say "thigh?"

Yeah, this is the sort of thing that would make me pause in the middle of writing a scene. But it is also the sort of thing I know doesn't matter to anyone but me.

Of course this is one of the biggest conundrums for a writer. You see the story from the inside. So you worry endlessly about justifying and explaining things that the reader will usually take for granted or not even notice are happening. Meanwhile the reader is worrying about things which are so obvious to you that you never thought they needed explanation...

Then he has to note that in German, the musical note we call "B," they call "H" (which is how Johann Sebastian was able to compose a tune around his own surname). This is, mind you, after giving me grief for putting too much in; too much detail, too many obscure things.

The context here is I have a character named Sharpe. That was entirely setup for a third act joke. And he was always going to have a stuck-up name anyhow, but making him Edward E. Sharpe let me make another joke about enharmonics; on the piano, E sharp is the same note as F natural, just as F flat is the same note as E natural. (They are actually different notes in theory, which is why the Germans use B for B flat and H for B.)

But no way that would go in the book. Heck, on the draft he saw, someone else nicknames the guy B flat -- the current draft changes it to F natural.

***

Dad gave me several useful notes which I've folded right in. These are largely places he read too fast and stumbled, but that's fine. I'd rather catch the stumblers than demand all the readers pay perfect attention.

He's also, though, opened my mind to some structural changes. As has the Writing Excuses podcast I was listening to at work today.

Big one being not frightening the horses -- I mean, first readers. The podcast put this in context; within the Kindle ecosystem, a lot of potential readers are going to pick up the first first pages for free to see if they like the book.

Well, the first few pages include one of the toughest info-dumps in the book. Or at least what looks like an info-dump. Either way, it can be heavy reading. It's the lecture on top the Acropolis, and Penny doesn't do this sort of thing again until the book is over half way done. But it sets up an expectation that the whole thing is going to be heavier weather than it really is.

So I simply need to savage the thing even more. That scene is doing three jobs; it is scene-setting Athens and the Classical era, it is showing Penny being working and being competent (nothing worse than starting with your protagonist doing nothing, just waiting for the adventure to start). And it was teeing up things, like the autochthonous origin of Athenians to the Gigantomachy, that will come into play later.

Well, I can screw the latter. I like having things repeat and having layers of resonance but I like having a book purchase more.

***

The other part of what is turning into yet another big edit is thinking about what fills the space. I've ranted before that people don't like description, don't like dialog, don't like mindless action. What exactly does that leave?

I mean, I've been trying to take one of the spices that defines this book and, really, my style out of the thing. I can't just leave a space.

So what I want to try is to punch up the emotion. That goes into dad's notes as well; he had trouble with a couple of transitions and what punches them is not just making the facts clearer, but giving the emotional beat time to breath.

Penny is adjusting far too easily to getting stranded in the middle of Europe. Sure, she is focused on the way out and the text should follow that focus. But this is a place where I need to tell as well as show. I can't just let her emotions be inferred. I need her to own up to them.

So, once again, another edit.