Mice are bowling

 It was back doing summer stock. Several of the crew had come off a particularly hated production of Evita and the most printable of their filk versions was a take-off on "Dice are Rolling" (which has the clever lyric, "...overweight to a man; they have that lean and hungry look.") They particularly hated the actor playing Juan Perone, but anyhow.

Might have been the same group and the same conversation but someone said that after yet another merger, Warner might have the rights to do another Evita -- but this time, casting from the stable of Warner Brothers animation.

Such as, the role of the self-important, womanizing tango singer Augustin Magaldi would go to -- Foghorn Leghorn. But who, you ask, would be cast as the all-important Eva Perone herself? There's not a lot of good women's roles in that period of Warner animation.

Ah, but you miss the obvious. There is only one character who could carry that off; Bugs Bunny.

Which makes the obvious casting of Eva's critic Che -- Daffy Duck. Besides, Daffy looks darling in a Che cap. Since this crowd wasn't exactly a Juan Perone fan anyhow, that role goes to Porky Pig. I think there was more to that conversation, but we've already strayed far from the original subject.

Mice.

Or to be precise, M.I.C.E. That's a coinage by Orson Scott-Card:

The idea is, a story may contain all these elements, but not in the same proportion. One story will be largely about exploring a new world. Another will be about fighting a war on that new world. Yet another will be about how the characters are changed by that new world. And so on.

Another interesting idea for the MICE is that these elements are usually introduced and closed out in nesting order. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle demonstrates this well (and if you haven't watched it, go ahead; it is a competent action-comedy made extremely watchable by the fine comic acting of Karen, The Rock, and Jack Black as ordinary teens finding themselves in very different bodies. Duane getting distracted by his own muscles remains hilarious.)

Anyhow. We start by introducing the teens. They are sucked into Jumanji. They find the land is under threat. Then, unfolding, they save Jumanji from the evil infesting it. There is a distinct pause, a moment, between them finishing the internal adventure (the Event) and leaving the world (the Milieu). And then...there is a postscript scene back to the original cast to see how they have been changed by the experience (Character.)

But why am I thinking about MICE right now?

I am fairly committed to the Venus story now. I have done enough research to have the bones of what kinds of things will work there. But instead of haring off into the sinkhole of world-building a hundred civilizations the story will never visit, I am going to shift gears (appropriately) into roughing out a story line I'm likely to follow.

And that brings up the question. How much is this a character-driven story? How much is about some big Event, and how much is just exploring the world as a (mostly) static place? Presumably it is going to be a mix of all of them but what leads?

I have an image of the Swift, a sort of space (well, air) Beagle, out on a voyage of discovery for the honor and prestige of the Crown. I also have an image of a massive and aged floating city that is rather Dickensian in the class society, abject poverty, and colorful gangs. One could easily spend quite a lot of time Oliver Twisting around the heights to the bowels of such a city.

And then there's the possibility of a slightly higher-tech and much more energetically machine-oriented diesel-punk sort of city which is rapidly gobbling up territory both through some advanced exploitation of mineral resources and some actual military expansionism. Hey, if I can't have Hornblower in Space, what about a few fleet battles between air-battleships?

And with the polar sargasso, there's potential for sword-and-planet adventures on something that vaguely resembles land. For "really, really watch your step" values of land. Even full-on jungle adventures.

Did I mention Venus climate is weird? 

And I've pretty much decided I am just going to bend the rubber science in two and copy the idea of some of the real elements of Venus, such as the mid-latitude jet streams or the nightly shift in the height of the cloud layer, but change the numbers all over the place until they have reached the proper levels of interesting; big enough to be dangerous, but still survivable without my cast having to go around in oxygen masks...and hazmat suits.

Oh, yeah. Paris isn't stalled, but I'm having to rework that book. What I had for a structure isn't working and although I have some good ideas I haven't quite narrowed it down to the right fixes. But that adventure with revising the Kyoto book was very much worth it. The biggest change was giving Penny more agency, more of a goal, and more visible progress through Part I. And that actually went fairly quickly. The places I had to stop for a week or two were places where I wasn't quite as sure where the theme and feel and character arcs wanted to go.

That's the trick, really. Once I know what I'm trying to write, it goes quick. It is figuring that out that takes all the time.