Paris Match

I finally have a plot. Took from November to nearly the end of January. And I'd been thinking about the Paris book pretty much since I started writing the Kyoto book.

So much for writing faster.

This may be where my process goes wrong. I read a lot of stuff about how you can plot by taking one of the basic plot structures and plugging stuff into the holes; I need a hero, I need a villain, I need a third-act crisis...go. And I am hearing a lot in writing podcasts and so forth about how writers will do these sort of skeleton books and only in revisions do they figure out what the themes were.

Which is totally the wrong way to write a Tomb Raider story. You start with whatever historical McGuffin is in the latest issue of National Geographic, contact Central Casting for some villains to get in the way, pick a couple exotic locations from the same issue and there you are. Oh, look, we're searching for the Horn of Roland this week. Why do the bad guys want it? It has magical powers (didn't do Roland a lot of good, though).

Which is a problem right there. I didn't want to lie about history, or be cheap about history. And I'm equally uncomfortable with backlot "foreign lands" full of appropriately colorful locals (who do damn-all without the help of the white protagonist).

But theme? That's the problem. I'm still out there trying to figure out what it is I'm trying to say about history, archaeology, and modern society. About the abuse of the Classics, the Elgin Marbles, and, yes, about how too many people think the Horn of Roland should or would have magical powers.

And while I'm thinking, I keep exploring ideas, and too many of those ideas stay in the final mix, and they mean that inevitably, half-way through the book I have to revisit some of those questions and revise what I am doing. I stopped for rewrites twice on the Kyoto book. That's not good for my throughput.

(On the other hand, I put it up without further revision. Once again, I'm listening to these podcasts where professional writers are doing four rounds of beta reads and multiple revisions and several rounds with editors. But the numbers don't make sense. The self-published are rarely selling enough to pay for that kind of time or help, and the ones who do sell well, seem to do so regardless of whether they did or not.)

(Sure, a nicely edited book is more pleasurable to read. But saying that is far from saying that well-edited books sell well. It really doesn't seem to be the case.)

So anyhow. I have a plot. The themes I chose to weave give me good enough excuses to do the water tank under the Palais Garnier, the Jules Verne Cafe atop the Eiffel, the Moulin Rouge, a parkour chase sequence, goings-on at the multimedia Van Gough exhibit, and a climb up Notre Dame the night of the fire.

It just means I need la Boheme, Cavalry in WWI, Chanson, Collette, Montmartre, a Mummy, Napoleon, Parkour, Phantom, Steampunk, Theater...