It looks like we're going to have another COVID surge. That's one good reason not to do the trip I was thinking of. Another is that if I'm going to spend all that time and money to go somewhere fun, I really want to be able to eat out when I get there -- eat out and feel safe and civic-minded about it, too. So I can wait a few more months.
Besides, I've got a big project at work, big enough I might need to pull some overtime -- right in the middle of where I might be making my reservations.
***
And, really, learning about snowmobiles is not the most pressing task on the book. I read the draft today, doing my best to try to see is as if I was coming to it cold without having read the rest of the series or even the cover copy.
And it doesn't work. Basically, there's a fatal flaw in the plot.
All three books in this series so far are shaped much like mysteries. In the Athens book, it isn't at all clear to Penny what the sherd means and why people are chasing her, but this is a "becoming a hero" story and at around the mid-point she turns it around, where instead of being chased she is actively pushing back. So sure she larks around at Oktoberfest and learns lots of things that don't matter to the plot (like the lyrics to "Ein Prosit"), but she went there with intent and she succeeded enough to move on to the next question.
The London book had the apparent stakes Penny's troubles with field school, with the mystery a light, useful distraction from her problems. Until in the later parts of the book the stakes went up. But at all points Penny had active goals, and active questions. It was also a bit more focused, with a great many of the seemingly random things all pointing towards the Nine Elms station.
The problem with the Kyoto book is I'm still doing the process of useful information being found out, but Penny isn't actively looking. She isn't even aware of it happening. And it isn't just that she lacks agency -- although that is an issue -- it is that there's no sense of movement.
No, it is worse than that. There's all these places, all this description, Penny is wandering around Kyoto doing stuff and looking at stuff and as the reader who didn't know where this was going I was seriously asking "Why is this stuff in the book?"
I can't even fall back on personal goals that are being interrupted by the adventure at hand -- as was sort of the case for the early parts of the previous books -- because the choices I made of where she is on her arc and how it is progressing means she's not talking about it.
Like the fear she is carrying from London. She is so afraid of that happening again she won't even talk about it in her internal monologue. Well, that could be an interesting choice, it could work, but I need to have something that the reader can be following, some obvious goal, some conflict, beyond, "Hey, I wonder what I should eat for lunch in Kyoto?"
So for the external, I can make some easy edits by throwing out two full chapters; the entire trip to the Gion Shrine, and everything prior to Nanzen-Ji on the Philosopher's Walk. And also dropping most of the Kyoto Porta, and some other trims. Among other things, that pushes the first ninja attack a bit sooner.
But that's not really getting at it. I need stakes, I need tension, and I need reason. I also need conflict, and this is where planning the revision gets tough. Because the best conflicts arise out of (or echo) internal conflicts.
What's going to make this work is finding ways in which Penny can be strongly conflicted and actively doing things in regards to that conflict. And because this is basically the concluding part of the Origin Story arc, that means I really need to define what kind of a character she is going to be in the following stories.
At least I have some hints. I've a conversation I wrote in one of the few scenes I thought actually worked:
“You didn’t used to be brave.” Aki was carefully keeping her voice neutral.
“I’m still not.” I drew in a long breath, pushed it out. “I just hide it better.”
“By running at trouble instead of running from it.”
“Thank you Doctor Aki.”
And then there's my earliest note on what I wanted to do with this; "You've got to be kidding me!" I think it works that Penny is always realistically afraid and ever surprised that she's getting away with the crazy chances she is far too often forced to make.
And maybe, just maybe, if I get the conflict and pressure and make Penny explain more how she is hurting I can build this up to the "Christmas Cake" moment I want -- and the final resolution.
But all in all, it means I'm going to spend the next couple weeks digging deep into character motivations and trying to figure out just what this series wants to be if it is going to continue. How much she's going to be the scared kid who thinks of herself primarily as an actress, and how much the cool and competent character she plays becomes her reality. I think the tension between those is ever interesting and I don't think I'm going to lose it...but I've got a lot of work to do.
So Lola may have to wait. The last words I typed were the first words of her introduction.
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