My readers (especially on Hounds) seem to be complaining about density. I can't really see it; I'm too close to the setting now and it all feels like perfectly natural language and geography and so on of South London.
(Of course I had a bit of this when I realized that the really, really basic Edith Hamilton level mythology in the Athens book was unfamiliar enough for my readers for some of them to mention it.)
And I'm not really on a path to a solution. The scheme for Wedding was "raw description." Lots of color and five-senses writing but not a lot of names and particularly as little Japanese as I could manage. This sometimes gets a little weird. I have her mention the "little water trough with the ladles" several times, which is an awkward way of describing the temizuya.
It even means that when she's having sushi or the multi-course dinner at the ryokan I can't give a sense of the variety by including names -- unless those names are very common (she mentions shabu-shabu in the latter, and yakitori in another scene).
This is something that's been increasingly bugging me in the series but it is going to change as she matures and gains experience. She has several times noticed the Jīzo around Kyoto with their red bibs, but she doesn't know what they are (neither did I, when I was there!) or what they signify. This goes way back; in Padua she went through the old Jewish Quarter and noticed that the streets were narrow and the buildings looked old and cramped but didn't know what it signified -- so she couldn't explain it to the reader.
I think this might be something the reader regrets; I've given them a "what does Kyoto look like if you've just stepped off the plane" but they might be hoping for an informed guide who explains more about what it is they are looking at. Even if that guide's expertise strains credulity at times.
The other arrow in the bow I'm using on this one (the Japanese call it a yumi) is exercise. When I first brainstormed this book I thought there'd be more action. Even the ninja that I ended up using, though, don't give me lengthly action scenes -- they tend to attack once, then retreat. There's only so many paragraphs one can get out of "threw a shuriken and missed."
But Part II is mostly an extended training montage. Something I underline and lampshade enough the characters themselves comment on it -- at least partly thanks to Aki-on-headset playing the appropriate soundtrack.
I don't know if it is working. I feel I still have too much Japanese concepts slipping in, even if I'm mostly leaving out the language (which, as I said above, can actually make it harder.) And there's more dialog than I expected, although I'm ending up with far too many scenes of Penny wandering around alone again. And the generic descriptions are killing me; I've run out of synonyms for "winding" as I've had to describe all these lovely little garden paths and forest trails and mountain roads.
Well, the Penny Solo stuff is a weakness of First Person. I was able to get the reader involved in Linnet's story in the second book, though, and I need to think about doing much more of that. To have a secondary character who is actively doing something and who we are watching through the book as they go through their own character arc. Not for this book, though.
But at this point, my best thought for the Paris book is I'm going to be filling a lot of pages with aesthetics. Not so much grounded descriptions of rocks and plants, but emotional descriptions of how art and music and literature and philosophy affect a person. And maybe I'll name-drop a bunch of artists and their more famous works. Maybe. I want to have as little French as possible in the book, in fact, to make a joke of how little Penny actually gets into speaking any.
But I'm early enough in that book yet. I haven't even made the final decision that it's going to be a Templar Treasure story. But I have decided that one way or another, there are going to be Masons.
(Also probably new covers on all three books for the debut of Wedding. Did I mention I tried a face-swap on the model I'd chosen? Not the perfect face but it works and there are nearly enough on her series in order to go through the process on all of the books. It's a pain, though. Especially hand-repainting the hair. That's why I'm re-hiring my Fiver to do a final pass!)
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