I wish someone would start up an entry on my books on TVtropes.
Not that they would. They, to use the terminology of Wikipedia, "lack notoriety." And they list fanfiction, so that's a pretty low bar I'm missing.
If they did, though, I'd probably have to go there myself to add all the tropes I consciously included. I was reminded of that again when I took a glance after finally getting around to watching Skyfall and ran into the trope "Voice with an internet connection."
Aki is totally this during A Fox's Wedding, with quite a bit of the cyber-geek on the other end of the headset re Wade from Kim Possible, Barbara Gordon in her "Oracle" days, and of course Q during parts of Skyfall. Which also crosses over with "Mission Control," and even Aki realizes this as she not only starts doing the voice, she name-checks Solid Snake from the Metal Gear Solid games. And also unwittingly spoofs the reverb-laden voice over (TVTropes calls this the "Inner monologue") of the early ninja film The Octagon.
Plus there's a live shakuhachi soundtrack in the same scene with the echo, to accompany an actual ninja ("But why...y...y...y?") attack. Not sure what this is but Penny has a late "Theme Music Power-Up" (it isn't her theme, though) and "Freak Flag" from the musical version of Shrek is all but name-checked in what TVTropes calls a "Misfit Mobilization Moment." Basically, there are multiple "Suspiciously Apropos Music" moments used in "Diagetic Soundtrack" form; in Aki's big "Mission Control" scene, with Penny "Cleaned up Nicely" complete with "Pimped-Out Dress" at a really, really fancy social affair, the live band swings into "You know my name" -- the title theme to Casino Royale!
And this little exercise has taught me why I shouldn't and probably never would do the work of putting all that stuff in. Finding out what TVTropes is calling those tropes this week is too much work!
***
I had a minor breakthrough on the Paris book (Sometimes a Fox). I realized I kept stopping to go off and do something, anything else because I was afraid of it. I wasn't looking forward to all the work of getting the scenes right.
Since I recently re-read all three of my books I have a good sense of some of the things I really want to change, and one of them is meaningless specificity. In that ninja scene, I spent several words of description setting up exactly how the subway entrance, bridge, little park etc. all related to each other.
Which had damn-all to do with the scene. I know, I know, I come out of theater and I like to visualize and that doesn't just mean blocking, that means knowing what the place looks like. But I am getting better at seeing what lands on the page and also of letting go. The reader will pick their own images. It is a fool's game to try to nail them down and make sure they understand the tiles are green and the signs are in German.
And that goes both ways. The theory of research (and planning) in writing is the iceberg; you need to know more than what the reader sees. But the more I am understanding what the reader can and should comprehend and retain, the more I understand how big the underwater part of the iceberg is.
And it is a lot smaller than what I've been making of it. Maybe, just maybe, I can push through and write the damned scenes while I am still excited about them and not spend so long worrying about getting it all right. (This isn't just a question of off-line research. This is about a lot of my process in trying to patch plot holes and address possible reader questions and make things seems to lead smoothly from one to another.)
So, yeah, I've been stepping back a bit this weekend and I am excited about some of the stuff I've got coming up. A very, very quick search showed me how appropriate La Defense is for learning some parkour, for instance.
I am still problem-solving on scene #2, though. For a lot of structural reasons I want to do it at the church of St. Pierre just adjacent to Sacre-Coeur (in Montmartre, that is) but I am doing absolutely terrible at coming up with the appropriate Dan Brown style clues she can discover by visiting the place.
Even if Huxley's plan is basically just a scavenger hunt. Clues in atrocious doggerel, probably. And no big secret at the end. But for this opening scene, it has to at least look like I am playing the game straight.
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