Technical Topic -- Using the City

A wonderful reader wrote, asking "What sorts of resources do you use to make your cities--London and Paris, in particular--so convincing?  . . .   find your London to be almost a character in and of itself."




As to making the city part of the story . . .  I think we gotta use scenery in a dramatic sense.

When two characters are talking, we layer in lots of stuff between their dialog and internal thoughts to make 'time' pass at the correct rate.  Scenery is one of the things used as a pacing device.

When Justine is walking down the steps in the Coach House and she's really scared I put in description of what's on the walls and what the downstairs looks like so the reader can get a gut feeling of being scared along with her.  That emotional response wouldn't have time to form if I took fifty words to move her from the upstairs to outside the door where she listens to the Tuteurs. 

Likewise, when Jess and Sebastian have left Lazarus and sit looking out over the Thames, the description of the Thames spaces out realization and revelation.  Lets it  unroll slowly. 
Likewise the underground journey in Forbidden Rose is meant to make clear that the rescue attempt is a long, perilous, uncertain, process. If I just said -- "and then they spent a couple hours bumping around in the semi dark till they found ... "  -- it wouldn't let the reader absorb the emotion.

Scenery puts the characters in passing time.

 attrib esprit du sel

Scenery is also symbolic.  It has meaning.

In Forbidden Rose, that passage through the darkness is Orpheus rescuing Eurydice.  Justine going down the stairs to face a great fear is every hero picking up his sword and going forward to meet the dragon. Sebastian and Jess sit face to face and talk, while the River Thames, which is their past, (Jess' mother used to take her there; Sebastian used to scavenge the banks,) flows beside them and away, carrying their past while they reveal it to one another.

The writer needs images.  Contemporary paintings and drawings are great for this. 

But it's not just about having the images in the writer head.

I think it is a mistake to just  'travelogue' a setting.    Sure enough, we need to describe the city.  Describe it vividly.  Tell everybody what the city looks like and what the weather is and colorfuldetailslikethatthere. 

But that's not enough.  The writer has to use the setting to accomplish more than "Isn't this exotic?"  We have to make the setting tell us about the characters.  We match setting to the characters' feelings and purpose. We make setting symbolic.

We supercharge the visuals.  We make them full of feel.

Technical Topic - Why Are They having Sex on a Cactus?

Someone mentioned --
this is a kinda summary and paraphrase here --
the unlikelihood that our Hero and Heroine would fight a pitched battle in the morning, scamper like hell cross-country in the afternoon, and then fall onto their bedrolls in the evening with energy enough to stage a six-page sex romp.


And I have to agree.
Even when I was young and and limber I could manage no more than two out of three of those on a good day.

So why do we see love-on-rocks romps and stufflikethatthere in good Romance?

Why do skilled writers give us this sort of over-the-top scene?

More to the point -- why do readers love these scenes?
Why does the reader suspend disbelief here, when she'll go ballistic on the authenticity of the fish knives?

Couple of tropes at work here.
One I think of as 'Naked in the Heather':

genuine heather

Our redoubtable hero and heroine think nothing of stripping down to the buff and having at on a heather-covered hillside in the Highlands, in March, taking no notice of gorse bushes and rocks and bristly heather and, well . . . March in Scotland.

genuine sand

The H&H make love on beaches, (with sand in every crack and crevice and I do not mean among-the-tidal-rocks crevices,) in haystacks, on New York City ledges high above the traffic, and in public toilets at the airport, (Ewwww.)


The other trope I call 'It's Only a Flesh Wound, Honey', which is often also Glad-to-be-alive Sex.

Our H&H take time out for some nookie while fleeing packs of ebil men armed with AK-47s or rising hurricane waters or, nowadays, zombies. Nor are they deterred by various wounds acquired in their travels.
One can only marvel at the good health and general enthusiasm of all concerned, frankly.

Why are these tropes not merely tolerated, but popular?
I haz theories.

genuine passion

One is that readers see sex in these unlikely situations as a sign of overwhelming passion. They know they would be distracted by the prospect of hermit crabs scuttling over their private parts on some secluded beach.
The heroine isn't ...
because she's transported by passion.

Many folks come to Romance genre for a fix of exactly such overwhelming, transformational, the-world-well-lost-for-love, crazy passion . . . an indifference to gorse bushes and gunfire being absent from most folks' real lives because they are not fruitcakes.

And readers enjoy the mix of desperate, adrenalin-producing action and sex because it's just plain exciting. They'll tolerate the unlikelihood that one would pause for a quickie in the middle of hot pursuit if the sex is really, really good.

Romance writers use these old reliables because they work. The tropes heighten emotion. They feel familiar and comfy to long-time readers. 

Now.  Full disclosure here.  I did the Glad-to-Be-Alive-Sex thingum once that I know of.  It was in  .... um ... My Lord and Spymaster.  Jess and Sebastian have escaped, unhurt, from the lair of Lazarus.  Jess had done some knife fighting in that incident.

genuine Romance book

****

Oh, but she was amusing him, wasn't she? 

 [Sebastian said,] "When you brush up against death, you want to couple afterwards.  I found that out years ago.  I didn't know it worked the same with women.  Does it?"
 
"Does this time," she said frankly.  "Mostly I was real young.  And the last couple times I was so seasick I didn't want to do anything but curl up and die. 

******

So that is my own particular contribution to this trope.


Writers have the special joy of watching really good writers subvert these tropes.

not quite a sex scene, however

Remember the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where a bruised, exhausted Indy falls asleep before the H&H can make love? Spielberg pokes fun at 'It's Only a Flesh Wound, Honey,'and makes the writers in his audience fall in love with him.

Technical Topics - Fight Scene

I was thinking about how we do fight scenes.  I'm kinda writing one.  Though not quite.

It's more an ambush scene.

So, anyhow,  I've gone back to look at a particular fight scene.  This one occurs early in My Lord and Spymaster.  Adrian and Sebastian meet Jess in an alley.  Violence ensues. No surprise.

Now, unlike those guys who write car chases for the movies, I'm not just fitting in 8 minutes of special effects.  I'm trying to tell 'story' with this fight action. Story leads up to the fight, lies inside it, and continues afterwards.
The little scenelet here is not really 'about' the fighting (though fighting might be the whole point in another sort of book.)  My goal, in writing this fight scene, is to show Sebastian's reaction, rather than the details of fight.

Writing fight scenes or furious action scenes of any kind, the technique includes short, easy sentences and lots of Germanic-origin words. Lots of white space. You try not to get bogged down in description. And, of course, the POV character thinks and acts like himself all through the action.  You use all your POV tricks to make this happen.

So let me look at a fight scene.

***

"Behind you! Sebastian!" Adrian's shout.

He saw them then. Silent as beetles, two men scuttled toward him.

More followed, slipping from doorways and corners. Under cover of the rain and fog, the pack had stalked in, unseen, converging from three directions. They were Irish, from the Gaelic they tossed back and forth. They carried knives and clubs and chains. These were vermin from the dockside, deadly and cold as ice.* They'd sent the girl as a honey pot to hold him while the gang closed in. She'd smiled at him while she was planning to watch him die. **

"Run from me." He let her loose. "Run fast."

But she backed away, wide eyed, breathing hard.*** "How? Nobody knows I'm here." That was shock in her voice and fear. She turned in a circle, looking for a hole in the net closing round them. And he knew she was no part of this. No decoy.

"More of them down that way. A baker's dozen." Adrian dropped out of the fog, into his usual place, taking the left. They were two against that many. Long odds.

He picked a target--one in front, where his friends would see him die--and threw.^ The bravo collapsed with a sucking, bubbling neck wound. The familiar stink of death rose in the alley. He pulled his second knife.

The thugs hesitated, sending glances back and forth, fingering blade and cudgel. Attack or retreat. It could go either way.

Then one man broke ranks and lunged for the girl.

She was fast as a little cat. He'd give her that. Cat quick, writhing, she bit the filthy arm that held her and knocked a knife aside and wrenched loose. She skipped back, clutching a long shallow cut on her forearm. "Not hurt. I'm not hurt."

attrib colorblot

No tears, no screams. Pluck to the backbone. She was also damnably in his way. He shoved her behind him, between him and Adrian. Protected as she could be.

If this lasts long, she'll get killed. "Mine on the right." He threw and his blade hit badly and glanced off a collar bone. ^^ One man down. One wounded. That would have been two dead if he'd had the sense to stay sober. "Waste of a knife. Damn."

His last knife was in his boot. Not for throwing. This one was for killing up close.

He forced his mind to the pattern the attackers wove, trying to spot the leader. Kill the leader and the others might scatter. Adrian danced a path through the bullyboys, breaking bones with that lead-weighted cane of his. ^^^

No way to get the woman to safety. She stayed in his shadow, using him as a shield, white-faced. She's been in street fights before.

Then he didn't think about her at all. Chain whistled past. He grabbed it and jerked the man off balance and drove his knife through a gap in the leather waistcoat, up under the breastbone, to the heart.

For an instant he stood locked, face to face, with the man he'd just killed--a thickset red-head with pale skin and vicious, gleeful, mad blue eyes. Outrage and disbelief pulsed out at him . . . and drained away. The eyes went blank.

Then the dead bastard thrashed, rolled with the knife, and took it down with him as he fell.

No time to get it back. A crowbar cracked down on his shoulder with a bright, sour, copper pain. He fell, dodged a boot, and rolled away as Adrian took down his attacker.

The girl screamed.

Up. He had to get up. He was on his feet, shaking his head, trying to see through a black haze. The girl was stretched between two men, being dragged away. He staggered through madness and confusion, fog and pain. Adrian was swearing a blue streak.

Under the chaos, he heard a monstrous racket of wheels on cobblestone. A goods wagon rounded the corner.

The girl tore loose, leaving her cloak behind. She reeled straight into the path of the horses and slipped on wet cobbles. She had a split second to look up and see hooves. Her face was a mask of raw terror.

He launched himself toward her. Too late. He knew he'd be too late.
The driver wrenched on the reins. Horses reared and squealed.

Frantic, she jack-knifed away from the striking hooves. She was so close to scrambling to safety . . .

attrib onceandfuturelaura

She slipped on the rain-slick cobbles. The wagon skidded. Iron rims shrieked on the stone. The wheel hit the side of her head with a soft, horrible thud. She whipped around, and wavered upright for an instant, and slumped to the dirty stones of the street.

Gaelic broke out. Shouts back and forth. Limping, dragging their wounded with them, the gang retreated.

He stepped over a body and ran to the girl.

She lay huddled on her side, as if sleeping, covered with blood and mud, her pretty dress torn halfway off her. Her hand lay upcurled on the cobbles, open to the falling rain.

******

* We've done a description of the alley in the chapter and a half before this so we don't have to describe the setting any.  We do have to sketch of description of the oncoming villains, because they are a new addition.  Having sketched them in right first,  we don't need to talk about the setting or the combatants during the actual fight sequence. This is a Good Thing.

** This fight scene serves several story purposes. One purpose is to show Sebastian that Jess is honest. In the fight scene we travel from Sebsatian suspecting her to Sebastian admiring her.
Because Sebastian changes his mind, the fight scene is also a transformation scene. Important stuff happens that could only happen under this sort of challenge.

attrib filmhirek

*** A fight scene is not just blows and weapons and footwork.  When appropriate, it's facial expression and body reaction.

^ We don't say, 'Sebastian is a skilled fighter'. We show him well-armed.  We show him planning and thinking like a skilled fighter.


^^ Fights are not just about skilled moves, perfectly executed. There's also one klutz screwup after another and good, solid, well-planned actions that don't work.

^^^ My fight scenes are wordy and internalized, rather than fast, brutal and explicit.  That's because I'm writing historical love stories aimed at women.  I figger at least some of them do not want to hear the details of blood and gore.  The '8-minute-car-chase' school of writing may not appeal.

What suits my purposes will not suit everybody.  Learning to write fight scenes involves comparing the flavor and technique of many styles.


Oh.  I said it's good to use all the POV tricks.  Here's the ones included.

-- Internal Monologue: If this lasts long, she'll get killed.

-- Self-directed comments that do not quite become Internal Monologue: No time to get it back; Up. He had to get up; Too late. He knew he'd be too late.

-- Specialized knowledge only the POV character can have: Adrian dropped out of the fog, into his usual place, taking the left.

-- Word choice that sounds like the POV character talking: fast as a little cat; damnably in his way; pluck to the backbone; the dead bastard thrashed.  Sebastian calls Jess, 'The woman' because he doesn't know her name yet.

-- Decision by the POV character, provided without buffer: He picked a target; he threw.

-- Judgement and assessment made by the POV character: That would have been two dead if he'd had the sense to stay sober; Kill the leader and the others might scatter.

-- Sensation is POV-directed and POV-immediate: he stood locked, face to face, with the man; disbelief pulsed out at him; a bright, sour, copper pain.

Some gems and some heroines

Jess, Maggie, Annique and Justine. 
Four heroines.
Four gems.

Which gem goes with which heroine?

Can you match 'em up?

Find out over at The Romance Dish, and get a chance at a copy of The Black Hawk.

Diamond and pearl are Smithsonian.  Ruby attrib JOBAfunky. Amber attrib ericskiff. 

An Outtake from MLAS

Martha, in the comment trail, asked about scenes that don't make it into the final book.

As a generality, there are Good Reasons why scenes quietly disappear from the ms before the Editor ever sees them.
The scene is boring.
Or it twiddles off down a line of minor plotting, instead of telling the love story.
Or it is talking heads conveying information.
Or all three.

Here below is a scene that got written
and then a draft or two later got grubbed up by the roots and tossed out.

The scene is not dreadful in and of itself. It explains why Jess, (our heroine in MLAS,) is knee deep in kimchee with the British Government.
But we do not write scenes to 'explain things'.

The stage action I kept, because I need the little jigsaw piece of scene to transition from one place to another. The action shows up, much modified, in MLAS as pages 152 to 158. But the version that hit the book is all about the love story instead of suspense plot and intrigue.

Below, you're looking at Second Draft work, not Final Draft work.
There's lots of awkwardness and bad phrasing.
And I've left in my 'notes to myself'.

*************** See the out-take here ******************
It begins ....


Adrian was propped against the wall in the stuffy closet they used as a listening post, reading from a black, bound notebook. He crooked a finger in invitation and kept reading. "Close the door."

There wasn't room for three in the cubbyhole. He slid in behind the table, the rack of pistols on the wall poking into his back. Trevor, the spy in training, sat at the table, his ear pressed to a brass ear trumpet that emerged from the wall and wrote, scribbling fast. The only light in the room came from the dark lantern at his elbow. Three sides of that were closed, the fourth open. In the bright oblong it cast, his pencil made a manic, dancing shadow across the page. Three books, like the one Adrian held, lay to his left. Another dozen were stacked and ready.

This was where the British Service watched and listened to what went on in the library. Jess was right -- the walls were full of rats.

... and it ends ....



"You and Josiah are playing games. Jess isn't."

"Then it's time she did." Adrian was still a moment. "Josiah knows what I am. Eventually, Jess will. Do you know, there are times I do not find being Head of Section at all amusing. Shut up, now. When I open this they can hear us."
****************

Couple of MLAS Q & A

Kind reader, Eva, writes with some questions about My Lord and Spymaster. I thought I'd bring 'em out and talk about them here. (She says it's ok.)

Eva writes: First- did Adrian ever have feelings for Jess? I can't tell if he views her as merely a friend or a woman that he believes is off-limits to him but has secretly lusted after.
When Adrian first knew Jess, she was only twelve. He was about twenty. Eight years is a huge barrier at that age.
In a way, Adrian never 'reset' that distance between them. Even when she's grown, he sees her as 'the child grown up.'

The original relationship between them would have been . . . smart-mouthed preteen and her very cool uncle or Olympic hopeful and the silver-medallist who's coaching her.
That is to say ... close, but never sexual.

Eva writes: Is Annique the only Frenchwoman that he claims to have loved?

We haven't met Adrian's woman yet.
I think she's going to turn up in Maggie's story.

Eva writes: By the way, I am seriously waiting on pins and needles for Adrian's story...... Hint, hint ;)
I plan to start Adrian's story as soon as I finish up the Maggie manuscript. That'll be early in 2010.
I haven't the least idea what I'm going to write.

Ah well, we wrestle only one alligator at a time.

Eva writes: what role has Eunice played before she began rescuing women? Was she a spy as well? Why is she protected by Lazarus? You drop sooo many hints about her but I'm just not sure if I'm putting the pieces together in the correct way.....
Leesee ...

Eunice is the daughter of a duke. (That's why she's 'Lady Eunice'.)
She was married at sixteen to a very unpleasant man, twice her age, who physically and emotionally brutalized her. He obliged everyone by dying when she was twenty-five.
(May we speculate that she helped him to his reward? That would be so satisfying.)

Eunice was left a widow with a miniscule income, an irreconcilable split from her family, and a burning desire to right the world's wrongs. By sheer force of will, she became a power in charitable London. Check out any well-run orphanage or home for wayward women; she's probably on the Board of Directors.

Standish is the love of her life.
(How could he be otherwise?)
She met him when she was in her late thirties and long past any thought of falling in love with anyone. He was doing a 'dig' of a Roman site in a ditch in East London. When they met, he was firmly -- if somewhat ineffectively -- protecting his pottery shards from the local disadvantaged youths who were sure he'd uncovered gold.

As to Eunice and Lazarus.
Eunice amuses Lazarus, which is reason enough for him to let her play in his part of town.

There's some practical reasons as well.
When he identifies himself with a force that brings food, clothing and medical care into his territory, Lazarus plays the good guy, and wins approval in the hood. That's the same reason he protects the Reverend.

Also, Lazarus doesn't want the daughter of a duke killed on his turf. He's tolerated by the authorities, in part, because he keeps that sort of thing to a minimum.

He finds Eunice useful as an object lesson. Having a place girls can run to is a salutary lesson to pimps who batter the merchandise.

And when he protects Eunice, Lazarus places a limit on the power of the most brutal and stupid of his gang. She becomes, symbolically, his power to do any damn thing he wants. It's a symbol that costs little to maintain since she's already well protected by her connection to the British aristocracy and, in later years, by Sebastian.

I think Lazarus is maybe a little cowed by Lady Eunice. She's intimidating when she sets her mind to it.

Now Eunice was never a spy. She's a flaming radical and has dicey intellectual ties all over France, but she's not really a political animal. She's a hands-on, practical sort.

Because of these ties, she's an excellent source of what we'd now call intelligence. She's first to hear the latest intellectual news from Paris. She's on an in-your-face framiliarity with half the criminal element of London. And she's related to everyone powerful in and out of government in England. (She's Galba's second cousin on his mother's side.)

Meeks Street uses her when they need a safe place for women who are hurt or on the run. She's willing to provide introductions to British Service agents who need to move into the fringes of the 'ton'.

Eva writes: why is there so much animosity\anger between Josiah and Lazarus? Aren't they related?
Josiah and Lazarus came to London as young men to seek their fortune. They worked together, getting rich and trusting each other and being rivals a little bit.

What drove them apart was Jess' mother. Lazarus had her. Josiah took her away.

After some serious conflict, they patched up an uneasy tolerance. For years, Lazarus envied Josiah his little family. Envied him the extraordinary child that Jess became.

Then Josiah was out of the picture. Lazarus stepped in.

In the years she was with him, Lazarus was training Jess to be a master thief and part of his gang. Someday, if she got strong enough and mean enough, he would have made her his successor. He thought of all this as 'teaching her the trade.'
He's not a nice man, but he wished her well. He loved her in his way. And because he loved her and the world is a dangerous place, he didn't cut her any slack when it came to following the apprenticeship he'd set her.

Family quarrels are the bitterest. But it's still family. Despite his words, Lazarus wouldn't have let Josiah hang. He helped Jess when she came to him. He would have intervened more directly if Josiah had actually come to trial.

Now ... as to why he scared her to death when she came to him for help ...

Jess betrayed him. She chose Josiah instead of him. He's pissed off at her, and he's hurt.

From a practical standpoint -- Lazarus is good at seeing things like this -- Jess isn't really safe walking the streets of London unless she's a true part of his 'gang' again. He can't just decree that she is. He needs to sell it to his people. Her fight with Badger is a 're-initiation' into the gang. It is the ordeal that transforms her from spoiled-aristocrat-outsider-who-deserted-us into 'one-of-us'.

And ... Ummm ... wandering into deep theoretical, pseudo-literary territory here ...
Jess' return to the padding ken is a symbolic death and rebirth. Lazarus (the name indicates rebirth from death ... ...) is the past that must be conquered and reconciled with. She makes this passage through the underworld in the company of Sebastian, (who is named after the saint who restored sight and speech and freed prisoners.)

Eva writes: And the woman who Lazarus had hostage until she was practically in labor- does he actually care for her? Why did she go back to him with the baby?
Second question first. She went back to Lazarus because women are such fools.

First question. Yes. Lazarus does love her.

We only see one moment of a long, tumultuous relationship, and we only see if from the outside.

She's going to 'reform' Lazarus in the end, I think, and he'll call her 'Fuffy' even when she's old and grey. They end up in Baltimore, become respectable, and their many descendents brag about their aristocratic roots.
If only they knew

Eva writes: I truly loved MLAS but I would have liked another intense, passionate scene between Jess and Sebastion.
I wish I'd had a little more time with MLAS. I write slowly, and there's stuff I didn't have time to get quite entirely right. I would have liked another sex scene, too.

Eva writes: firmly believe your books would make fantastic movies.
From your lips to Hollywood's ears ...

An out-take from MLAS

Here's an outtake from My Lord and Spymaster.
I refer to it in a later post. Here it is, in full, for anyone who wants to see it.

In a much modified form, this scene made it into the book.

***************

Adrian was propped against the wall in the stuffy closet they used as a listening post, reading from a black, bound notebook. He crooked a finger in invitation and kept reading. "Close the door."

There wasn't room for three in the cubbyhole. He slid in behind the table, the rack of pistols on the wall poking into his back. Trevor, the spy in training, sat at the table, his ear pressed to a brass ear trumpet that emerged from the wall and wrote, scribbling fast. The only light in the room came from the dark lantern at his elbow. Three sides of that were closed, the fourth open. In the bright oblong it cast, his pencil made a manic, dancing shadow across the page. Three books, like the one Adrian held, lay to his left. Another dozen were stacked and ready.

This was where the British Service watched and listened to what went on in the library. Jess was right -- the walls were full of rats.

He waited till Adrian looked up. "Don't question her again."

"Ah." Adrian gave him the same meditative consideration he'd been using on the book. "You're feeling protective."

"I can't deal with her when she's so scared she can barely think. You're making it worse."

"Naturally. We are, in our own small way, His Majesty's government.[which caps?] " Adrian shrugged. "We didn't haul out the bastinado, [date, sp] you know. Fletch chatted with her once, politely. Pax coaxed at her as if she were a kitten hiding under the sofa. Galba attempted reason. Reason is always a mistake, I feel."

"You've put this in my hands. Leave her to me. No more badgering."

"Our attempts to badger were, if I may say so, water off a duck's back. Do you want to see her badgered? Let's take a look at that interesting reunion next door." An angry rumble vibrated the walls, coming from the study. It had been going on for some time. "That's Josiah, disapproving of her recent exploits."

"Or he's annoyed she didn't follow his orders well enough."

"I don't think you're a fool. Do try not to disappoint me." Adrian flipped back to the beginning of the book he held. "Here are today's notes. Eight o'clock -- breakfast with Galba, discussing the market for fake antiquities." He thumbed forward. "Macleish, at ten, much incensed over problems in inventory and complaining about Pitney. He is followed by Pitney, at noon, complaining about Macleish. Pitney then enlivens everyone's day by peaching on Jess, who has been a very naughty girl. You must curb her tendency to climb four-storey buildings. [check hyphen]"

"I intend to. Let me see that." He helped himself to the book. To give him credit, Trevor wrote a clear hand and filled in later what he missed the first time through. "Damnation. Pitney knew what she was up to and didn't stop her. She took a bloody ferret with her. Can no one control that woman?"

"Good men have tried." Adrian reached across and turned forward a dozen pages. "This is what you want to see. At three o'clock, matters become interesting. Sergei Orkoff visits. What do you know about Sergei?"

"Attaché with the Russian Embassy. [check legation? Check possible titles] Smooth. Amusing. I see him at Claudia's soirees, hanging on the fringes of the Foreign Office and War Ministry crowd, listening. Very friendly to men who talk more than they should. My guess is he's in your line of work."

"Discerning of you. He is also an old friend of Josiah's.

"Orkoff is everybody's old friend."

"Too true." Adrian watched him read. "You will see they greet one another with glad cries, in French. That is to keep us on our toes. Some discussion of where to get decent pastry in London. The rain. Orkoff reminiscences of bordellos in Heidleburg."

And there was page after page of it. "Why did you let him in?"

"The Russian Embassy asks us to. And I was curious. Next -- you'll come to it -- Josiah discusses bordellos in Munich. In German. Sergei relates a filthy but inventive story involving animals and a Prussian Grand Duke [check title margravane]. Trevor finds this all very interesting. One seeks to educate the young."

"Fascinating." He turned the page. "They've switched to ... what? Russian."

Trevor stopped pretending to take notes. "That's because Orkoff's Russian. Or ... koff. Russian."

Adrian said, "Russian isn't one of your languages, is it? I'll have Trevor do a translation tonight."

The stripling looked mutinous.

"Tonight, Trev." Adrian's voice was gentle.

"He's not going to read it." Trevor [some action]. "The Captain's made up his mind. He's not here about Whitby. All he's doing is bullying Jess into bed with him."

"Then Jess will slice him stem to stern and laugh girlishly while he writhes in his own blood. Nonetheless, you will deliver the full translation to his house tonight." Adrian let that settle in. "A careful translation."

The mutter might have been, "The hell I will." Or it might not. Fortunatly, Trevor was Adrian's problem. [look for echo in earlier scene]

"Just tell me."

"Always the practical man. Let's see." Adrian took the book and turned it into the light. "We continue in the same vein. Customs officials in Athens. Cheeses. An anecdote concerning the Swedish legate [check] in Vienna."
Adrian laid the notebook on the table, held flat under his spread fingers. "And here, in passing, Orkoff mentions the transfer of a tourmaline from Josiah to a certain Levgenny Gregoritch Petroff Romanovski,[check Russian names]. For safekeeping."

He felt a dry prickle across the back of his neck. A warning of danger. "A Romanoff?"

"A minor, but perfectly genuine, Romanoff. He has vast estates overlooking the Black Sea." [check political geography] Adrian waited.

"Whitby doesn't deal in jewels." It took a minute. "The tourmaline is Jess."

"Regrettably, yes."

Trevor's hands, on the table, clenched into fists. "She won't do it. I won't let her."

"How nice for you both. Let us see what Sebastian has to say about this, shall we?" Adrian smoothed his way along Cryllic [caps?] letters with his fingertips [check frequency of fingertips]. "Reading between the lines ... the Russian Embassy [ambassador, legate, legation] offers to intervene on Josiah's behalf with his His [cap?] Majesty's Government. Josiah leaves the country. His holdings in England are forfeit to the [devolve? confiscated] crown [caps?] -- that's the sweetener for the Foreign Office [what office deals with treason?] -- and Jess marries a minor Romanoff. That's the payment to the Russians."

Jess, God help her, would marry a syphilitic dwarf if Josiah told her to. But it wasn't going to happen. Even in the first blank instant of rage, he knew that much. "Damn the Czar anyway."

"Amen."

"Whitby wouldn't live six months."

"He would meet some elegantly Byzantine end. The Russians are so good at that sort of thing."

"Whitby dead. Jess inherits half the shipping in the Eastern Mediterranean. Quite a coup for the Romanoffs."

But Jess wasn't destined for some Russian lordling. That wasn't what Adrian was warning him about. He did a quick mental tour of the labyrinth of Russian Imperial politics and didn't like what he found. "It's not ships the Russians want."

"Not ships. Not the indecent pots of money. Not warehouses. It's the [arabic word or turkish word for 'contacts'] prestige. The influence. Whitby knows everyone. He has a network of spies and commercial agents from the Crimea to Khartoum."

"It's the Whitby name they want."

"I can almost hear the Russians slavering."

That was the East. He'd sailed those waters for a decade. Every trade, every encounter, was an intrigue of boxes nested within boxes, wheels within wheels, layer after layer of subtlety. England played intricate, rough games in the ports and palaces. So did the French and the Austrians and the Russians. "It changes the balance of power. The Foreign Office can't allow it."

"They'd see the company, and both the Whitbys, destroyed first."

"Both Whitby's. They'd have to destroy both of them." Jess did collect enemies, didn't she?

He rubbed his chin, feeling the beard. He'd been up all last night searching the Whitby warehouse and he hadn't shaved. He looked like a pirate and Jess still didn't even have the sense to be scared of him. "No wonder she doesn't trust the government. Did the Foreign Office frame Whitby?"

"I think not. Probably not." Adrian closed the book. "They are not, strictly speaking, that clever. And Whitby's has heretofore presented no problem."

"They'll find out Orkoff was here."

"Certainly. They will eventually figure out why. Some bureaucratic popinjay will then panic." Adrian met his eyes. "He will fix upon one of the two obvious solutions. That is why Jess will return to your house every night, mon ami. Your footmen will stick to her like so many nautical mustard plasters [date] every day, and my own men will lurk in the shadows lending just that soupçon [check]of official support. This is the last time she gives us the slip. She must not fall into the hands of the Foreign Office."

Behind the wall, in the study, the grumble of a man's voice continued, words muffled to unintelligibility. Jess was getting yelled at.

Outside, the real storm was gathering. He could protect her against Cinq. Could he protect her from his own government? "The Foreign Office doesn't want her dead. They want her married to an Englishman."

"To their chosen Englishman. I doubt Jess' consent is considered strictly necessary. Sit down, Trevor." That was directed at the boy. "There is insufficient space for strenuous heroics."

Trevor subsided, muttering.

The boy was right about one thing. "They can't make her do it. Not Jess."

"I will back Jess against triple her fighting weight in Foreign Office lackeys. And Josiah's been diddling the diplomatic service for years. I suggest we listen intelligently to what he has to say to Jess." Adrian set his hand on the small, square panel in the wall behind him.

This wasn't what he'd come for. "I don't –"

"... You don't listen at keyholes. Have I ever told you how much I admire gentlemanly scruples? You read the transcripts. You pass a quiet hour pawing through her bedroom. But you won't eavesdrop. These distinctions escape me. Douse the lights, Trev."

Without a word, the boy closed the door of the lantern and threw them into total dark.

"Sebastian, they know I'm watching. They expect it. Think of it as a sort of game." The sound of tapping fell into the darkness. That would be Adrian's fingers, restless on the table or the edge of the chair. "I specialize in betrayals. I assure you, this hardly qualifies."

"You and Josiah are playing games. Jess isn't."

"Then it's time she did." Adrian was still a moment. "Josiah knows what I am. Eventually, Jess will. Do you know, there are times I do not find being Head of Section at all amusing. Shut up, now. When I open this they can hear us."
***************

If you want to go back to the post where I was talking about this, it's here.

Technical Topics -- Talking Heads II

In My Lord and Spymaster, I had a dozen nuggets of backstory to pass along to the reader. So I wrote a Talking Heads scene. Adrian and Sebastian search Jess' bedroom.

How do you make a Talking Heads scene slightly less horrible than it might otherwise be?


-- Best choice is you turn the action of the scene into plot action. (i.e. You make it 'not' a Talking Heads scene. )

So, instead of folks sitting around the kitchen table, talking,
which does not change the outcome of the story and is not story action or even plot action,
you change it into folks sitting around the kitchen table building a bomb or performing an emergency lobotomy or cutting letters out of the newspaper for the ransom note
all of which are at least plot action.

-- Failing important plot action, you do the next best thing.
You liven things up with 'stage business'.

Stage business doesn't advance the plot, but it's interesting. Folks bend spoons with their psyches or learn to play the fiddle or get hiccups.

What else do we do to take the edge off a Talking Heads scene?

-- You layer on sensation, of course, as you would in any scene. Give visuals. Blow whistles. Waft forth the smell of brownies in the oven.

-- You make sure there's real info to share. That is, they don't already both know what's being said. ("As you know, Bob ...")

-- Your characters interact with each other. You enrich, expose and develop the characters. You might even sneak some story in this way.

-- And, most especially, your characters react to the information that's being conveyed. They wouldn't be talking about it if it weren't important to them.

OK. Coming to one of my specific instances of Talking Heads.

In the search-Jess's-bedroom scene I want to convey the backstory factoid that Jess had an old boyfriend.
Sebastian and Adrian do not sit at a table and swap info.

You got yer stage business
and yer visuals
and yer interaction between Sebastian and Adrian
and you got yer character reaction to what's being said.

Here's the scenelette:

Adrian tapped the letters together and looped the blue ribbon around them and made a jaunty bow. "Gods. I was never that young. I'm glad Jess was, for a while."

"It wasn't tied like that."

"I'm showing her somebody's been in here." He set the letters carefully back in the box and closed the lid. "Not a sparkling correspondent, young Ned, but I don't suppose she noticed."

That was the name written in the front of the Odyssey. "Who's Ned?"

Adrian was up, wandering the room, leaning to peer in at the fireplace. He waited just long enough to be annoying. "The Honorable Edward Harrington. She was fifteen. He was bright, likable, ambitious and quite sickeningly in love with her."

"A paragon."

"It has given me considerable satisfaction, over the years, to think of Jess, out in the straw in a horse barn, bestowing her virginity on that boy." He ran his thumb along the carving of the fireplace. The mantel was black marble and the design was scrolled leaves. "He had the face of a young Apollo."

Jess's lover. The one who'd put knowledge in her eyes. "What happened?"

Adrian shifted the firescreen aside. "Genuinely bad luck. Josiah shipped him out as supercargo, to see what he was made of. Edward Harrington died heroically off the Barbary Coast, saving the lives of two of his shipmates. He was seventeen." Adrian rolled up his shirtsleeves and knelt on the bricks of the hearth. "Jess spent the next year constructing Europe's best accounting system. I don't think she slept at all for a couple months."

"I see." He wasn't sure what he saw, except that he was jealous of a boy, half his age and dead.

"He was a better man than either of us." Adrian twitched a knife from its sheath on his left forearm. "And look here. Jess has been sloppy."************

What do I do to make the Talking Heads marginally palatable?

*****************

Adrian tapped the letters together and looped the blue ribbon around them and made a jaunty bow. That's stage business and visuals. "Gods. I was never that young. I'm glad Jess was, for a while."

"It wasn't tied like that."
There's human interaction. Sebastian is annoyed at Adrian. That's what interests the reader right now, not so much what was in the letters ... though that's supposed to be intriguing too.

"I'm showing her somebody's been in here."
Which is Adrian's reaction right back.
The Talking Heads don't just talk. They snipe.

Information comes to the reader under cover of these two guys being annoyed at each other. The reader doesn't have to care about the info. She can care about the two characters on stage.


He set the letters carefully back in the box and closed the lid. Stage action. "Not a sparkling correspondent, young Ned, but I don't suppose she noticed."

See the character interaction?
Adrian lures Sebastian to ask questions. Adrian , for reasons of his own, obviously wants to convey information.

The way the info is released becomes important. The characters have a reason to talk about the info. They have an attitude toward the info.

One of the dangers with Talking Heads is we can set them to chattering about stuff they don't really need to discuss.
So in a Talking Heads scene you always ask yourself -- why this info? Why between these two people? Why now?

... Here, it's because Adrian has something he wants to say.
That was the name written in the front of the Odyssey. "Who's Ned?" 

Adrian was up, wandering the room, leaning to peer in at the fireplace. He waited just long enough to be annoying.

Adrian doesn't just lay the information out for Sebastian like he was dealing cards. There's an ebb and flow to it. Adrian teases Sebastian with what he knows. Sebastian pulls info out of Adrian.

"The Honorable Edward Harrington. Ned. She was fifteen. He was bright, likable, ambitious and quite sickeningly in love with her." 

"A paragon."

"It has given me considerable satisfaction, over the years, to think of Jess, out in the straw in a horse barn, bestowing her virginity on that boy."

This is Adrian's emotional truth. The factoids are just slathered all over with meaning.

The way Adrian says this shows Adrian's awareness of who he's speaking to. Adrian wouldn't say this, this way, to anyone else.
Info filters to us through its source. If story facts are not modified in the guts of the man who holds them, we don't have real characters. Likewise, info is shaped towards its recipient.

We don't just 'tell a fact'. We tell the fact we see and understand. We tell it to our audience.

Our characters have to do this too.

OK. OK. This is true in any dialog.But it's especially important to keep the basic dialog rules in mind when we do Talking Heads. T.H. tempt us to forget everything we've ever learned about dialog.

He ran his thumb along the carving of the fireplace. The mantel was black marble and the design was scrolled leaves. Visuals. Stage business, too, I guess. "He had the face of a young Apollo."
Adrian's emotional reaction to the factoids.

We transfer the emotional punch of these old factoids into the present. The T.H. do not merely tell the old story; they experience that story now.

This is not an exchange of info. It's a replaying of old events and old truths with the character's current reactions.

Current reactions hold the reader's interest. Sometimes, they're story.



Jess's lover. The one who'd put knowledge in her eyes. That's the internal from Sebastian. "What happened?" 

Adrian shifted the firescreen aside. "Genuinely bad luck. Josiah shipped him out as supercargo, to see what he was made of. Edward Harrington died heroically off the Barbary Coast, saving the lives of two of his shipmates. He was seventeen." Adrian rolled up his shirtsleeves and knelt on the bricks of the hearth. "Jess spent the next year constructing Europe's best accounting system. I don't think she slept at all for a couple months."
That stuff above ... here's a minor technical.I'm doing the big long run of straight backstory here. I get it out of the way, all in one lump. What I've done ... I've laid big dollops of emotion before and after, and I'm hoping like mad that the reader doesn't get bored while I real quick-like slip all these little facts past her.

"I see." He wasn't sure what he saw, except that he was jealous of a boy, half his age and dead.

And we got us some internals.
Internals go with Talking Heads like Burns with Allen.
Sebastian thinks about what he's just been told. He reacts. He feels.
This is the necessary ingredient. This is what mitigates Talking Heads and all this factoid dropping. The human reaction pulls the reader through the scene.

"He was a better man than either of us." Adrian twitched a knife from its sheath on his left forearm. "And look here. Jess has been sloppy."

At this point, Adrian grabs us and jumps onto the next bit of stage business. We leap from past to present, from interior to exterior.
We go on to do an interval of solid, visual stage business. That's our respite before the final set of factoids lands like wet dough onto the floury board of the scene.

Adrian, Grey, Jessamyn . . . look like . . .

Emlyn says ...


And because you mentioned that Annique resembled a young Natasha Kinski, could you put a face on Adrian as well? And Jess as well?

I got Jess tacked down someplace or other as Robin Wright, in The Princess Bride. Further back in the posts a bit there's links to pictures for both Jess and Annique.

Adrian ...


Two artists' rendering.
painted about five years
apart.












This is Sebastian.
Here, .

[Edited to add -- I've pulled out the copyright photo and put in a link to it. Now we are all legal again. ]



And Grey.










.

creative commons Bollywood Sargam

You are a witch, btw. These characters are ALIVE to me.

.

(jo blinks.)

You mean they aren't alive?

.

.

WAAAAHHH!

Annique looks like ... Jessamyn looks like ...

For anyone interested in what Annique looks like ... I kinda pictured her as a young Natassja Kinski.

Can't post her picture, not having the rights, but there's a link to it. Here.

There's no reason heroines have to be beautiful. Not generally. But Annique's job calls for a degree of beauty, so she gets to have it.

Jessamyn is another reasonably pretty girl, but the generality of mankind doesn't turn to watch her pass in the street. I'm thinking Robin Wright. Here.

Moving into Chapter Ten

I've been backtracking in Chapters five and six to fine-tune reactions and tighten prose. Sebastian's persona seems a bit squidgy. So hard to write male POV.

Or maybe I'm trying to write from plot, trying to drive Sebastian through actions he wouldn't take and into emotions he wouldn't have. Would he really confront Jess in that way, with that much sexual aggression, just then? Just there?

But even though I'm not pleased with the breakfast sequence .. I've left it aside and done some forward work into Chapter Ten. Just a thousand words or so.

Busy with holiday stuff too. Tra la.