Quick Reference

I don't know why I never found out about this before. (Probably because I didn't have the dual monitor setup to use it before). Scrivener has a function called "open as quick reference" that opens the current document in an independent window.

"Document," in Scrivener world, is a chunk of text with its own name. It is the lowest order of the nested organizing hierarchy.  Mine are scenes. Actually, I tend to write a full chapter in a document, then use the "Split" function once I'm done to turn it into individual scenes. 

So now I've got the new Gion scene open in the main Scriv window, one of the scenes I've cut and the chapter notes on the other monitor. Much easier to reference back and forth.

Now all I need is a wider monitor to really get some use out of this. My big monitor is connected to the gaming PC and if it wasn't, you know, Windows I'd be tempted to move Scrivener over to there for even more real estate.

***

So far the rewrites are going well and the story is feeling exciting again. But I'll see how it goes; I'm still on her first day in Tokyo. According to the Scapple layout I'm throwing out 8,000 words worth of scenes in a story that was just under 50,000 when I had to stop and rethink. But it isn't so much cutting as it is focusing and adding more intent. So some of the existing scenes may get longer. And I'm combining a few things -- like the Gion sequence, at least as much as I can.

So this is great for me as a writer. It is showing me that I can take what seemed to be a manuscript all tangled up with dependencies -- this scene needs to be here because it gives the information that causes this following scene to happen, etc. -- and break them all and rebuild another set that works just as well. I was starting to get concerned I couldn't do high-level editing.

It is really high-focus stuff, though. I can only do a few hours of it in a day before I need to take a break. Which these days is like as not driving aimlessly around Medici (Just Cause 3) on my big gaming monitor. I finally got the best sports car in the game into the garage. Had to steal a big Army helicopter off the Black Hand and sling the car under it to get it over the mountains...

***

And I still need to do the new covers. Trying to come up with a scheme that will work through the series and give it identity. Lot of work, and I'll be paying for help with all the things I'm not good at anyhow. But I did get a mock-up of the second book that I think might work:

Don't even worry about the Spielberg Gun there. If I go with this I'm doing a face-swap, adding the fedora, painting new hair from scratch, losing the extra belt, changing the colors on the clothing...and that's before getting into lighting to really sell the tunnel.

And I'm playing with the idea of running a filter then hand-painting portions on top of that to give it more of an illustrated and less of a Photoshop Paste-up look.

But that's all secondary. I'm not even assured I'll finish the Kyoto book. Much less write a fourth.

Sad piano music

Actually I'm feeling quite good about the re-writes. This is really what I was foot-dragging about. The narrative is just boring description -- even if action is happening -- if there isn't a driving goal. And Penny's voice needs that go-for-broke craziness; the few scenes or bits that were working for me was when she was making strong (and surprising) choices.

Planning is going well enough I might be able to start editing actual chapters this weekend. 

***

Too early to take a break, but music still calls. I broke out the trumpet again to see how much of my lips I'd lost. I'm a couple notes shy on the high end but mostly it is my tone that suffered from being away from daily practice.

The flute, I'm finally finding the ways to get that second octave with a clear tone and without having to play FFF to get up there. I've started playing two-octave scales, and the changes to the embouchure as I go up and down are becoming muscle memory and instinctive.

That's the problem with teaching an instrument, you know. And why most good players are lousy teachers; it is because they have internalized certain things until they are merely instinctual. I am no longer conscious of rolling the flute slightly with the octaves -- but I know I'm doing it, because that's how I got there in the first place.

What I think would be simple and easy is some noir noodling. The sort of moody background stuff which is mostly bass, harmon mute, brushed snare, and vibraphone. Of course I have a bass. But I don't have the acoustic bass I want.

I should have bought that fretless ukulele bass I saw. Well, okay. I can play bass parts on my chin bass. There's just the little matter of finishing the build.

I cut a neck out of...can't remember the wood now, I think it was yellow maple:

As a visualization, rough-carved a styro body and painted it glossy red, but I didn't like the look:

So I've picked up a cheap violin kit and I'll try fitting to that. I don't care too much if I waste the current neck; it was a first trial of the kinds of shapes and dimensions I believe I need.

I have new toys; finally got around to making a rolling cart for the smaller bench-mount tools:

And I also dropped a few bucks on the oscillating spindle sander I've been wanting for so long (which is currently at my work site doing a big project.)

And maybe all of those new tables I built will give me enough space to do a couple recording sessions after hours...

There's no business like snowmobile business

It looks like we're going to have another COVID surge. That's one good reason not to do the trip I was thinking of. Another is that if I'm going to spend all that time and money to go somewhere fun, I really want to be able to eat out when I get there -- eat out and feel safe and civic-minded about it, too. So I can wait a few more months.

Besides, I've got a big project at work, big enough I might need to pull some overtime -- right in the middle of where I might be making my reservations.

***

And, really, learning about snowmobiles is not the most pressing task on the book. I read the draft today, doing my best to try to see is as if I was coming to it cold without having read the rest of the series or even the cover copy.

And it doesn't work. Basically, there's a fatal flaw in the plot.

All three books in this series so far are shaped much like mysteries. In the Athens book, it isn't at all clear to Penny what the sherd means and why people are chasing her, but this is a "becoming a hero" story and at around the mid-point she turns it around, where instead of being chased she is actively pushing back. So sure she larks around at Oktoberfest and learns lots of things that don't matter to the plot (like the lyrics to "Ein Prosit"), but she went there with intent and she succeeded enough to move on to the next question.

The London book had the apparent stakes Penny's troubles with field school, with the mystery a light, useful distraction from her problems. Until in the later parts of the book the stakes went up. But at all points Penny had active goals, and active questions. It was also a bit more focused, with a great many of the seemingly random things all pointing towards the Nine Elms station.

The problem with the Kyoto book is I'm still doing the process of useful information being found out, but Penny isn't actively looking. She isn't even aware of it happening. And it isn't just that she lacks agency -- although that is an issue -- it is that there's no sense of movement.

No, it is worse than that. There's all these places, all this description, Penny is wandering around Kyoto doing stuff and looking at stuff and as the reader who didn't know where this was going I was seriously asking "Why is this stuff in the book?"

I can't even fall back on personal goals that are being interrupted by the adventure at hand -- as was sort of the case for the early parts of the previous books -- because the choices I made of where she is on her arc and how it is progressing means she's not talking about it. 

Like the fear she is carrying from London. She is so afraid of that happening again she won't even talk about it in her internal monologue. Well, that could be an interesting choice, it could work, but I need to have something that the reader can be following, some obvious goal, some conflict, beyond, "Hey, I wonder what I should eat for lunch in Kyoto?"

So for the external, I can make some easy edits by throwing out two full chapters; the entire trip to the Gion Shrine, and everything prior to Nanzen-Ji on the Philosopher's Walk. And also dropping most of the Kyoto Porta, and some other trims. Among other things, that pushes the first ninja attack a bit sooner.

But that's not really getting at it. I need stakes, I need tension, and I need reason. I also need conflict, and this is where planning the revision gets tough. Because the best conflicts arise out of (or echo) internal conflicts. 

What's going to make this work is finding ways in which Penny can be strongly conflicted and actively doing things in regards to that conflict. And because this is basically the concluding part of the Origin Story arc, that means I really need to define what kind of a character she is going to be in the following stories.

At least I have some hints. I've a conversation I wrote in one of the few scenes I thought actually worked:

“You didn’t used to be brave.” Aki was carefully keeping her voice neutral.

“I’m still not.” I drew in a long breath, pushed it out. “I just hide it better.”

“By running at trouble instead of running from it.”

“Thank you Doctor Aki.”

And then there's my earliest note on what I wanted to do with this; "You've got to be kidding me!" I think it works that Penny is always realistically afraid and ever surprised that she's getting away with the crazy chances she is far too often forced to make.

And maybe, just maybe, if I get the conflict and pressure and make Penny explain more how she is hurting I can build this up to the "Christmas Cake" moment I want -- and the final resolution.

But all in all, it means I'm going to spend the next couple weeks digging deep into character motivations and trying to figure out just what this series wants to be if it is going to continue. How much she's going to be the scared kid who thinks of herself primarily as an actress, and how much the cool and competent character she plays becomes her reality. I think the tension between those is ever interesting and I don't think I'm going to lose it...but I've got a lot of work to do.

So Lola may have to wait. The last words I typed were the first words of her introduction.

Whatever Lola Wants

 I look up too damn much.

It's my way of solving plot problems/blowing through a block. I've got a scene set in the New York Bar atop the Shinjuku Hyatt -- aka the Lost in Translation hotel. Of course I had to look up the opening hours first and, dammit, the scene needs to be in the adjoining grill and no the live music doesn't start until the evening.

(That's not actually the room -- I just thought it was cool there's some people who put together these architectural illustrations of famous movie hotel rooms. I have actual floor plans for Penny's room. Of course.)

I thought it might be cute to have a show tune playing, perhaps something semi-obscure, a Cole Porter say, that Penny could recognize. Well I'd seen that the bar and grill take that "New York" to aggressive levels. I saw a Yankees-inspired artwork in one of the photos. And that's when I flashed on the 1955 musical Damn Yankees. Which I always thought was obscure but I guess not really. Anyhow, the breakout song of that musical is "Whatever Lola Wants."

Cue a comparative listening session to Ella, Carmen, and Sarah Vaugn. Because I might need to know. And then when I wrote the scene it never came up. Well, isn't the writer supposed to know four times what they actually put in the book?

***

But does that mean I want to blow six-hundred bucks plus on a research trip? My up-front costs for a week in Crete were under a thousand (flight and hotel). It's over a hundred bucks to rent a snowmobile for a couple of hours, and the nearest snow that's snow enough for snowmobiles to be there too is a long enough drive I don't want to risk my car on it, meaning another couple hundred in rental. Then since I'm tired of forty-dollar motel rooms and it is sort of research (and sort of affordable luxury) something both nice and interesting to stay at.

Similar costs to get onto a go-kart, and it would be indoors, electric, closed track. Of course if you could rent one to go out on the city streets (there is one that does downtown SF) I'd be terrified to try it. I'm not much for driving in city traffic even in a real car. They are all about the racing and the idea of a check ride just isn't on. Pay for a year membership, then pay by the race, and you will be racing. I still might do it. If nothing else, it's a shorter drive.

This novel is taking forever and I don't feel comfortable about it. And, yes, this is the scene where I introduce the Takakarasienne, who I intend to be a striking and pivotal character...and I still haven't finished reading the book!

And this is going to need another round of revisions, and lots of pruning. Revisions because I don't think the conflict is visible enough or the stakes visibly high enough out of the gate. And pruning? In the current draft of the Shinkansen-to-Shinjuku hotel scenes, I've name-dropped or referenced Shakespeare, Metal Gear Solid, Minecraft, Mario Kart, Cinderella, Blade Runner, Chelsea FC and the League Cup final, Superman and the Daily Planet, 1984, and The Big Sleep.

Real Life Writes the Plot

Was dragging this week but never got really bad. So fingers still crossed that the mystery bug is finally over with. Have just enough energy to start looking at reservations again to see if I can get any snowmobile and go-kart riding in. The latter turns out to be a real pain in this area. It's all electric and indoors and it is really designed around party of 24, mostly kids, staying all day to ride all the other rides and buy popcorn.

So this is the third book in the series and more-or-less finishes up the origin story, or "Hero Begning," as Half Life, Full Life Consequences puts it. So there's still this aspect of gathering the necessary tools and skills to be the full-fledged adventurer she's going to be. One of which was going to be fast-talking.

Come on, it is right in the name. The fox, which is a trickster figure in pretty much every mythology. So I had this bit in mind where Ichiro would demonstrate fast-talk at the kart rental place to get around her not having her International License.

But when I researched, it didn't seem that easy. They are pretty good on their paperwork (considering that, for just a license and a twenty-minute safety lecture they let go you go out in Tokyo Traffic with a gas-powered go-kart!) Plus it made Ichiro look callous, and just when I'm trying to heat up the relationship.

The timing was also tough. I was dreaming of a Yojimbo sequence on the Shinkansen, except there, too, there's not much in the way of dining car or other chances to get together and etiquette is pretty much against conversing with strangers during the trip. And that would happen before Tokyo, so...

That's when I finally got to the meta-question; Do I need this?

And the answer is no, even if it does kick some stuff downstream. You see, the fox -- the kitsune, more precisely -- in Japanese mythology is a trickster but it is a casual, light-hearted trickster and its real thing is shape-shifting. It is the European fox that really gets clever -- so save Reynard for the proper setting of Paris. Keep the focus of this story on mirrors, masks, blurring lines of shape (and gender, a little bit), etc.

The useful way to play this scene is Ichiro has procured the license for her (they really aren't much; there's no test involved or anything. It's more like a translation of an American driver's license so they can read it in other countries). So once again she's an imposter, in a situation that she doesn't feel she has earned or is ready for. This is after all in the context of the Tokyo sequence:

Fast cars, luxury hotels, fancy parties, expensive clothes. That's the New York Grill, by the way -- top of the Shinjuku Tower and part of the Park Hyatt Tokyo. 

I've also given up having anything particularly weird happen during the kart tour. There will be a man in a ninja costume. And, yes, I've pretty much decided she's getting the yellow jumpsuit, even though this makes problems for me all over the place. It is far too easy to tweak things to make the cinematically or thematically appropriate things happen and I'm trying not to write like that. Well, not completely like that. So that means the tour can concentrate on the excitement of basically driving too fast in Tokyo. Look; the actual tour crosses the Rainbow Bridge! Goes through the Shibuya Intersection! That's crazy enough already.

And I'm not really making the Tokyo sequence the "isn't Japan weird" part. Like I said, it will be mostly in the Hyatt and the Imperial and about the high life which is largely floating free of local culture. But there will be a big chapter in a somewhat crazy night mostly in the Akihabara.

Lost in Translation

No longer feel wonderful. Don't feel horrible, though, so that's progress. I was of course hoping to plough through a couple of chapters this weekend but of course I didn't.

I actually need to do some of my reading. I'm about half-way through the book on the Takarazuka now, but I also really need to open a Lonely Planet Tokyo and get a sense of the big structure of the city. I'd like to keep the action limited to a few locations but...

The problems for me stop the moment Penny steps off the shinkansen. Where does she meet Kit? Where does Kit teach? What is the fancy hotel she'll be at? Where is this big gala thing (and what is it...a gala, a fundraiser, an auction, a dance, a buffet, what?)

Well, I have a leading contender for the hotel. Shinjuku, which is good and bad. Tokyo Takarazuka is in the Ginza, and from the number of ballet studios around there I'd say this was where Kit should be as well. And the Hikikomori Night is going to take place mostly in Akihabara. But the Yamanote Loop should get me to most of these places (I was only in Tokyo for 2-3 days but it is starting to come back to me). 

Anyhow, the top floors of the Shinjuku Park Tower, the weird triple-tower skyscraper facing another Kenzo Tange construction, the "Minitrue" like Metropolitan Government Building, contain the luxury Park Hyatt Tokyo with its New York Grill -- floor to ceiling glass and live jazz.

Just the thing I needed when I'm so desperate to finish this, though. More stuff to look up. That's the thing about Japan; it really is a foreign country. A non-western nation, for all that has changed. So you can't assume; a simple scene of a character hailing a cab and going downtown to shop for clothes could be thrown off by, "Oh, they don't have cabs here." Or whatever it was you assumed was there but are sadly wrong about.

So, down the road, if I really do write more of these, I either have to relax my standards a lot (and start doing Dan Brown geography), or I need to plan a few more overseas trips!

今日も, 新幹線 を ご利用 くださいまして, ありがとう ございます

 Finally on to Part III.

I wanted to put a little parallelism in the Shinkasen scene. The opening chapter of the book, directly following the prologue, she is on a JAL flight and confused by the announcement; "Shiito beruto wo shikkari o-shime kudasai…"

Which is also a setup; her friend in Boston explains the first words are "seat belt," as translated through kana into Japanese. In the next scene, she's confronted by several serious men saying, “Kochira Ashina Fokusu-san desu ne?” in her direction. (The name of her alter-ego, rendered into katakana, would beアシーナー フォックス according to an online converter. I've omitted the lengthened vowels and otherwise simplified slightly to make it even slightly plausible that she eventually figures it out.)

And, yes, this is Scene Building II. I've answered so many Scene Building I questions over at Quora. People keep asking, "How do I write a scene where..." and the answer almost always includes, "find a way to dramatize it." Find the conflict, find the stakes, find what gets the reader involved in reading to the end to figure out what is going to happen.

But, you see, in the length of a novel, not all scenes are like this. Not all scenes are directly load-bearing. There's a pattern of stress/relax, sometimes built into try/fail cycles; it can also be considered as action/reaction cycles. A big action sequence when things are happening quickly and big developments in the plot are flying by is followed by a recovery scene where the characters take a breather, take stock, discuss what the heck just happened. Oh, and maybe move the B plot (particularly the romance plot) ahead a little.

So not all scenes have a primary purpose of being dramatic and moving the plot forward. As much as I'm not in the mood for writing a slow scene, I need a slow scene for the opening of Part III for several reasons. I'm coming off the last exercise scene, her big "Drago!" moment. 

I'm also changing venue. Changing style; the Kyoto scenes are traditional Japan, slow walks, lots of food, and of course working out...during revisions I found a place to do a total Karate Kid shot. Tokyo -- this is where we ramp up to full spy stuff, fancy parties and fancier dining, fast cars, fast-talking, and so forth.

You can transition from one place to another in the white space; "The next day we were in Tokyo." You can transition over a paragraph. But it isn't always the right choice. Sometimes you have to feel the journey. "Five weeks later Frodo and Sam arrived at the Black Gate." Yeah, doesn't work. 

But back to Japanese. I'd looked around, and I'd found a recording on YouTube of the actual announcements in 2019 on the Nozomi from Kyoto to Tokyo. It was even subtitled. In kanji of course. 

If there had been no other way I could have got out my Kodansha's and tried to work it out character by character. There was audio, but this was an actual recording inside a train and it wasn't exactly clear. Ah, but I also found a discussion on a language forum with some examples of other train announcements.

So that began a cycle of making my best guess based on what I understood of Japanese pronunciation and grammar, putting that reversed into GoogleTranslate so if I came close enough it would show me choices in kanji, then comparing the kanji. Fortunately, a chunk of the announcement particles and verb ending stuff and I did once memorize my hiragana. Like, I can definitely see "-imasu" at the end of the phrase. And, doesn't 

just leap right out?

It takes longer to say than it did to do. At the end of it, all that is going in the book is, “Kyō mo, shinkansen o go riyō kudasaimashite…”

(The full phrase is Kyō mo, shinkansen o go riyō kudasaimashite, arigatōgozaimasu. Which idiomatically is "Thank you for riding the shinkansen today" but in Japanese is a bit more like, "From today, shinkansen using-please thank you for what you are doing.")

And as it turns out, the english announcements were recorded by a certain Donna Burke, an Australian singer and seiyu who was, in fact, the voice of the iDroid from Metal Gear Solid.

Which is very close to the James Bond beat I'm trying to work in here. (Since no scene ever does just one thing, this is also a short reflection showing how Penny is starting to adjust to becoming Athena Fox, continuing set-up on a "robots and neon" running gag, and a brief but extremely necessary discussion of the Atsuta Shrine, specifically, how Kusanagi no Tsurugi is claimed to be kept there but nobody but high-ranking Shinto priests have ever seen it personally.

And, yes, I wanted to have her anime friend in Boston jump in with a "Major Kusanagi? I know her!" But I can't afford to get that far into anime/manga so there's no way of properly exploiting that. And although it is a fun character beat, it wouldn't mean anything to half the audience without further explanation.