He's here, the Phantom of the Opera

Finally, Part II of the Paris book is finished. Well, draft is finished. But I am a revise-as-you-go type and that puts me a lot closer to final draft than one might otherwise think.

A long tailing scene through the Palais Garnier, with musings on history, architecture, theater, and a whole bunch of stuff about Phantom.

Were I a better writer I might have been able to engage with the building more fully. Using the physical spaces and the various stories told in and of it as integral elements of the cat-and-mouse pursuit. I did sort of manage that when I did the big after-publication revision of the Japan book, making some semblance of one of those martial arts period piece chase scenes, jumping through windows and throwing straw baskets or whatever, out of what had been a stroll through the reproduction Edo-era town on the outskirts of Kyoto.

I didn't quite finish watching the 2011 Royal Albert Hall staged production of Phantom, or the 1925-1927 Lon Chany version, or for that matter reading the book. Much less Phantom of the Paradise, or any one of a hundred other adaptations of the story. Truth be told, I was doing long hours on another "unexpected emergency" project for the engineers at work. And what was playing through my earbuds to keep me awake was not Sir Andrew, but the MTV production of Legally Blonde.

***

Turns out I know someone who worked in that theater. At least he answered my ghost light question and whether the drops would be in or out. But still too many questions about the physical layout and none of the stuff I've found online is helping enough. Pretty much, every "behind the scenes at Palais Garnier" thing you find on a shallow search is either selling you, or telling you that someone sells, tickets for the guided tour.

Which I really should have taken while I was there. But no, I'm not going back to Paris to do research on a book only three people will ever read. So instead on to the Louvre, especially the Concourse mini-mall on the way to the lower entrance, parkour, La Defense, and the old belt railway (and some cataphiles...still on the fence about whether I will let Penny go into the catacombs on this trip.)

Tour de Paris

Had to work this weekend but actually felt pretty good Monday...over lunch at work, opened the file and wrote. A good hundred words. Whee! Do that for a year and I'd finish the novel.

I jest a little. The Palais Garnier chapter is at 1,700 words and no huge problems yet. Well, aside from the outline planning on this being an epic 4,000 word sequence. 

For no particular reason, though, I started thinking about what the book does as a tour of Paris. What hotspots does it hit and does it do anything interesting in them?

So here goes the current sequences (I use the term "sequences" as being a common idea or thread or location that may span several scenes or even chapters, or be concluded in just one or even part of one.)

A cafe at the place du tertre, and Penny meets a fellow tourist on her first day in Paris.

Penny looks for clues around Sacre-Coeur, atop the butte of Montmartre.

A stroll down Rue de Abesses, travel tips and beginning French, one of the Hector Guimard metro stations.

Back to place du tertre to meet a caricature artist, first of the "bohemians" who run a steampunk cabaret in modern Montmartre.

Musee d' Orsay, art and gossip about the Impressionists, and discussion of the Paris Exposition of 1900.

A (brief) stroll down the Champs Elysees and visit to the Arc de Triomphe, with Marianne (in the Phrygian cap), pointing the way to the next clue.

Morning workout running up the Rue Rivoli and past the old vineyards of Montmartre.

A visit to Shakespeare and Company, and the bouquinistes along the Seine.

A parkour chase across the Ile de le cite, followed by Parisian street food and a brief discussion of the Jewish community of Paris.

The Steampunk cabaret, with various popular songs being done in French...and German. Plus a "dual time" visit to the bateau-lavoir in the company of a young Picasso.

The Pompidou Center, Tintin (Herge was Belgian, though), and a long discussion on Rodin.

Another chase, starting in Gallery Vivienne.

A tailing scene through the projected landscapes of a Van Gogh multimedia show.

A talk with a "love picker" on Pont des Arts, about the love locks of Paris.

Another tailing scene through Palais Garnier, with a whole lot of stuff about the Phantom of the Opera.

***

And that's where I am. Projected, a steampunk photoshoot at the Arts et Metiers metro station, a parkour workout at La Defense, a description of the foyer at the ballet, a meeting with cataphiles along the route of the old Petite Ceinture and a run-in with some punks, details of what happened to Picasso's friend and why his Blue Period, a steampunk garden party and mock duel at Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, a midnight climb of Notre-Dame des Paris, a daytime visit to Notre-Dame du Travail, and a dinner at the Jules Verne cafe atop the Eiffel Tower.

So there's a few more hundred-word days left there.

Capital idea

I'm a good ways into the love locks scene, with one last big chapter to go to the end of Part II. Boy, has this one been a slog!

I also decided that I will send this to an editor after all. I'm not going to sell enough copies to pay for that, and I haven't the patience (see above!) to do developmental edits, but I want a line editor to go through the thing because I just can't deal with capitalization and, even more, italics.

Within the context of what I am doing some of these are arbitrary choices. As a for-instance, I am in this book italicizing sentences in French. As per the trend, if the entire sentence is in French the quotes are also italicized, otherwise, not.

But should I italicize names? Everyone knows the Louvre, so that probably shouldn't be. Something like the Ile de la Cité is actually a descriptive phrase as well as a name. As is anything that is a Rue or a Pont; should it be the Pont des Arts, because "pont" is the French word for bridge? It seems to make sense; that it would be the Eiffel Tower or le Tour Eiffel depending. But then is it properly Notre Dame, since that just means "Sacred Heart?" Or is it better that the familiar English Notre Dame isn't in italics, but Notre Dame de Paris when it is given in full form?

There's a bit early on when the character Bastien is speaking franglish; he is mixing actual French with English and English roots given French grammar (apparently that's a thing). So...which parts of that mess should be in italics?

Oh, and French capitalization rules are different, too. Of course.

I can at least get the French words correct by hiring a French reader. As painful an experience as that is likely to be. But the thought of trying to figure out consistency in such cases as whether I should italicize or quote or both something like, "You say 'bonjour' when you enter a place of business..."

In the Japan novel, my rather odd rule of thumb was that only proper Japanese got italics. If someone mentioned "sushi," that was just treated as an English word imported from Japanese. Even much of Aki's weaboo speak didn't get graced with italics, along with Penny's mixed attempts at it. Only a complete grammatical/idiomatic sentence from her got the full italics.

But all the little details of even if it should be the Eiffel Tower or the Eiffel tower are just too much for me to mess with. Sure I can look them up. But there's something on almost every page, and I'd just as soon to pay someone to worry about that. And fix the places where the italics or the intricacies of punctuation around quotations escape me.

I would very much love to somehow push through this one, and find some way to kick a few more out the door on a much shorter schedule.

(And, yes, the Love Locks scene is on the Pont des Arts. Largely because that's the bridge people think of if they've heard of love locks at all. And even though it is clear of them now, finding an excuse to stick some up anyhow is easier than going into the history of which bridges still have them...)

***

I've been reading a series about a very Mary-Sue character -- it is intentional on the writer's part, but only partially works -- and that's been giving me thoughts about larger-than-life characters. The Greeks didn't have the hangups we do, in that their heroes were larger, stronger, and probably related to a god, and that was just fine.

The first superheroes were also very much of a "faster better stronger" mold -- one of the innovations of Marvel was heroes that had problems and hang-ups and weaknesses, with perpetually broke hang-dog Peter Parker being the poster boy. And now we have come to where we often dislike the really skilled characters -- and when we get them, we demand that those skills have some logical reason for being.

One of the things critics express about the "Sue" characters is the opinion that they haven't earned their powers. But I can't help thinking that there is a hidden gender bias in there. The same swipe of a pen gives a character a black belt, a physics degree, six years in the Marines...but the readers question it more often when that character is female (doesn't help, of course, that the standard is usually hot, young female -- that is, not of the age and size and battered appearance that really should go with those years of getting those skills shown on the paperwork. Yet, this qualification is often waived for the men as well...)

A lot of what went into Penny was reaction on my part. I didn't want the standard female protagonist package, with or without the "strong" appended. So no handy martial arts background or surprisingly young doctorate degree, but she also isn't a shy loner, she gets along fine with cheerleaders, and her hair isn't perfect after a week in a cave.

Yet she is becoming a hero. Sure, an "ordinary man" hero, but in a semi-realistic universe (and trope-aware enough herself) to recognize that you stop being ordinary by the third Holy Grail you manage to dig up. So far, I've held back in that her superhuman ability is her almost autistic focus on whatever history the plot requires her to be knowledgable about.

(She's also able to pull of physical stunts that a self-described "ex dancer and climber of plastic rocks" shouldn't be able to pull off. And has stubborn endurance which is also way off the bell curve. But those are part of the standard "ordinary man" exception where one ticking atom bomb is enough to let thirty-something computer salesman who sometimes plays a bit of pick-up basketball somehow come up with the strength, determination, and sheer luck to beat up a renegade Green Beret.)

The main magic skill I've given her is language. She has an instinct that she isn't in control of. Which basically, at least up to this book, is given her the seasoned-world-traveller characteristic of being able to speak a little of whatever the local language is, without me having to defend her actually learning the damned thing. She's just a very finely tuned parrot; speaking the correct idiomatic phrase to get her through an interaction (with nearly flawless pronunciation), even as she has no idea what it is she said.

And none of that makes my job of how to treat language any easier.