Inifinite Trojans

I woke up this morning with the thought of just deleting the book from Kindle. And giving up on that particular series.

No, I wouldn't give up on writing. I just don't feel strongly about that book. I can do some quick fixes but I can't deal with spending a lot of time on it, not when the basic foundation is unsatisfying.

So here's the slightly more productive -- but equally dangerous -- thought for this morning.

I never explained The Odyssey. I mean, I just got through adding in a few details for that reader that somehow hadn't remembered the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. And I took out a lot of the "In Critius" cites and replaced them with "Plato also says."

So why assume the reader knows their Homer?

***

But what is the option? Do I really want to explain the whole story? Sure, it would strengthen the connections I'm making both to Penny and her Odyssey from the Rhine valley back to Athens. And to the story of Schliemann "discovering" the historical Troy.

But the trouble with history is, where do you stop? If I have to explain even one episode of The Odyssey, do I have to explain the basics of the book? Do I then have to context it by explaining the Trojan War? Do I have to explain that in turn by talking about Homer and his time?

This is a sort of inevitable problem. You say, "Alea iacta est" and someone says, "What?" So you explain that Caesar said it. "Caesar who?" "Julius Caesar. You know, the first Emperor of Rome."
"Which Rome?" "Classical Rome, not the modern city..."

Obviously there is always more to say. That's not the point I'm making. The point is how to you find that place where the reader thinks they know enough and thus is comfortable continuing on with the story?

"Your father and I fought in the Clone Wars," Ben Kenobi tells young Luke. That's enough, for that moment, for that conversation. Later, the movies had to visit that time (and royally messed it up.)

So where is the equivalent point in talking about Homer? How much needs to be on the page in order for the reader not to stop, furrow their brow, and reach for a dictionary? If the reader doesn't know of The Illiad, how can you communicate to them that it is okay to skip over it, and it either won't matter much or the important bits will get explained later?

I find this particularly odd because Science Fiction and Fantasy absolutely do this all the time. No writer (well, okay, no writer other than Jack Vance) mentions "Fellbeasts" and then immediately explains all of their biology and habits. Instead, the story creates an empty box. And the reader carries around this box labeled "Fellbeasts"; two chapters later, the reader learns they are found in the Mist Forest. Another chapter, and that they were created during the Mage Wars and can not be killed by iron weapons. So the box is getting filled, bit by bit. And now they have another pair of boxes...what was this "Mage War" you were talking about?

I mean, think of the mystery story. We don't know who killed him. We don't really know a lot. And we are told right up front that the dame with the slinky legs who told us the reader that her husband is dead is lying about a lot of things. There might not even be a body at all!

But, no, you do other genres, and suddenly the reader is all "Portkin, Nebraska? What kind of town is it? Is it on the Federal Highway? How many people live there? Is there a Starbucks?"

Why can't they accept that they aren't going to learn everything, and that there absolutely is no practical way to tell them everything right at the first instant they demand it?

***

Maybe it is better not to mention it at all. I have an episode late in the book where my character is trying to single-hand a small sailing boat across the Aegean. She notices some kind of weird disturbance in the water, perhaps a sort of whirlpool, but in steering away from it finds herself getting far too close to some rocks.

That's how I described that bit to my Boston Latin graduated dad at the pub a few weeks back. "Scylla and Charybdis" he said.

So the reader who didn't know, still doesn't know, and more importantly, isn't left with a question. This really is a better way of doing things if you can.

A lot harder when the point of the scene is a visit to the Acropolis. "There was this old building thing in Greece and it was historically important" really, really isn't going to fly.