The Ken Burns Cinematic Universe

Unlike Disney, who gets to chose what is and isn't officially part of the Star Wars universe, documentaries are constrained to come as close as possible to the real world.

I had a whole scenelet planned out around the current archaeological excavations of the Stoa Poilike in the Athenian Agora. I've got a pdf from excavations in 2011, links to the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (who have been there since 1931) and drawings and pictures of ostrakon with the name of Alkibiades, electrum coins stamped with the head of a bull (possibly from the time of Theseus, or so says Plutarch), and a cute black-figure lekythoi painted with a scene depicting the apobates, an "unusual event in the Panathenaic Games" involving a fully-armed hoplite jumping out of, then back into, a moving chariot.

And best yet for my purposes, a section that forms a neat palimpsest as Byzantine trenching cut down far enough to expose the original foundations, with a nearby well (used and/or expanded as late as the 19th century) that does a similar job of going through multiple horizons.

I drafted the scene last night. It didn't work. I put in my notes to re-arrange so there's more banter, more character stuff, and the Diogenes story comes at the end.

This morning I started work by reviewing the geography of the setting. And, whoops.

Turns out the actual site isn't directly (or publicly) accessible from the agora. It is not just across Adrianou Street (named after the Emperor Hadrian, of course), but across the railway as well. Pity, because it is a very typical example of how modern Athens lives with the history under it. A Greek restaurant that wouldn't be moved juts out into the space on an island of dirt and stone, as you can see in the picture above.




But this may be to the good. This scene really isn't about the history; it is about having fun with the kind of friends you make when being a tourist.

When the maps showed me the geography of Frankfurt am Main didn't support the scene I was planning, I recast it for the Bad Münster a Stein banhof. And that led me to what seemed to be a better approach; instead of physical action, to play to the strengths of my protagonist; have her have to talk her way out of it.

But after three attempts and a deep dive into the character arcs and themes planning folders, I realized this undercut what I wanted to do with my antagonist. I could not afford to have him speak in this scene. So rewrote it once again and I'm basically back to physical action. But I did get a good character moment out of it. Maybe in re-writes I'll even be able to punch it up and make it really pivot.




So this weekend is all about filling in some gaps. There's one scene with big holes in it and three that I skipped over entirely to get into the "chase" section of the book.

There are advantages in writing draft and seeing how all the pieces work before laboring on the scenes in detail. Well, at least there are now. When I wrote my first novel I found it far too difficult to lift and move big sections or re-cast the entire thrust of a chapter.

Well, I also have better software now. So I'm about to put it to the acid test and take my phone to the cafe for brunch and writing. (I suffer from the opposite of agoraphobia. I need those crowds and those potentially uncomfortable social situations and those uncontrolled elements of the wide outside world, otherwise I crawl into my head...and I don't get any writing done.)