Not farming half as well as I know already

Annoying. I post a few answers about writing here and there on Quora. I'm one of those writers who thinks about how writing works. A lot. And this is an ongoing roundtable with people who have multiple traditionally-published books so...what I'm saying, what I think I know, isn't that far outside the norm.

Basically, I know how to write. I know how to construct a plot, build a story around it. How to keep the action moving and develop character and keep the pacing.

But I'm not doing it in the books I'm writing. Hell, my trunk novel -- Shirato -- did a better job of mechanically putting story together.

The Paris book is bringing the worst out of me. It is almost a thing I could have referenced inside the book; I recently finished the long chapter at the Centre Pompidou, with the Hergé exhibit. He seemed to get tired of the stock adventure plots, too, and his last two albums -- Catastifiore Emerald and Tintin and the Picaros are intentionally (Hergé said so himself in interviews) shaggy dog stories. Everyone runs around in the typical Tintin manner, and at the end of it, nothing is accomplished.

And, yes, I'm slipping in things that look like me talking about the writing process and my own art in specific. They aren't unintentional reveals, though. These are very much structured and planned. In the scene I'm working on now, when they enter Galarie Viviene Penny gives a quick overview of the passages of Paris in historical context.

And Amelia stops her with a "Do the people who watch your YouTube show really like that sort of thing?"

cc David Pendery

 

This is the setting for another parkour chase. I am still deciding whether to do the chase at the longer and more rambling Passage du Caire -- I might save that passage for the Egyptology stuff I'm thinking of getting into in Part III.

In any case, it feels too obviously like one event, followed by another event. I was reading a space opera I got free on Kindle earlier this week and I stopped at about half way through because while there was nothing wrong with it, there wasn't anything right, either. A thing happened. Then another thing. Some of the things were exciting, but there was no sense of an actual plot unfolding.

Well, if there is one thing I've been good at, it is seeding questions. I have always made sure to have something that the reader hopefully cares enough about to find out whether it will work, if they will succeed, where the artifact is, what she has been hinting about, etc.

But that's not the same thing as having a clear structure.

Travel adventure is bad because it turns so easily into travelogue. Scenes become an excuse to show off a new setting. But I find myself -- as in this Passage scene -- wondering what exactly the scene IS, if not a new place to show off while I move the mice of plot and character forward another space on the board.

Sigh. This one should have been easy to make it a strong plot. Unlike Penny's previous adventures, the plot starts right there in the prologue. She's got an old book with clues that lead to a treasure. What's more plot-like than that?

But then, this whole series is archaeology-adventure. Should have been plot from the word go. What went wrong?