Maudlin Bedlam

And for a different view:

I had -- have -- too much detail in the early chapters of The Fox Knows Many Things.

There was a reason. These are about being lost in a strange land and not knowing how to do anything and thus having to pay attention to everything. Every sign, every social tic, every overheard word, until you get a grasp of what in heck is going on, how to get food, where to find transport, and how not to make an ass of yourself.

But it still drags, especially if the reader hasn't clued in to why it is there.

I just finished taking a bunch of extraneous details out, from a reference to an old movie to a description of a German breakfast. But that doesn't get at the real problem. It might make it worse.

I've got labored descriptions of fairly banal things. A typical DB train carriage. The Frankfurt airport. I think it would have been stronger to go ahead, have the crazy descriptions, and yes go way outside of the needs of the story, if it could be some of the things out there that are actually fun.

I felt at the mercy of maps and schedules. I couldn't do a scene at Neuschwanstein Castle, Mad King Ludwig's insane Bavarian gingerbread fantasy, more Disney than the Disney Castle inspired by it.

Okay, sure, I was able to juggle so I could go to a middle-ages street fair and even glimpse a little of the joust, and get to Oktoberfest. The former of which I'd been to and had photographs, so easier to write from life. But, really...I got my protagonist all the way to the fancy Frankfurt airport but the plot didn't allow her to reach the concourse. Not even the aging split-flap display, infamous for skipping letters thus announcing flights to "London, Deathrow" and similar.

I could do Piazza San Marcos but I couldn't quite work in the interior of the basilica or even a gondola ride. Much less actually make it down to Rome.

Heck of a Tomb Raider story, really; the deepest she ever got underground was the bottom of a cistern, the closest thing to a high-speed chase was a commute down the autobahn, and the big Artifact at the core of the story...is a clay pot.

But this is what I'm realizing as I plot up the next one. Sure, set-piece scenes are fun; to climb the Eiffel Tower or run with the bulls in Pamplona. But big or small is in the eye of the beholder. You can admire a vintage plane without having to fly it with a bomb on board and two engines on fire. You can go see a show in Bromley as easy as you can take in one in the West End.

Maybe Odysseus isn't the best model for this. Maybe it should be Ulysses. Sure, I did get Penny to get into a fight with a giant. But it seems to me that visiting a museum should be as interesting; as long as it is intriguingly different, insightfully observed...

And not too labored.