It's interesting to compare my world to your article. The main city is essentially New York but I call it Grisham instead. Since I'm writing alternative history, I didn't want to spoil New York's history and I didn't think I could capture the essence of the city since I have never been there. This lead to more cities across the country being made for similar reasons and now, the only real cities I have are DC and San Francisco.
Yes, exactly! Write what you know becomes "I know the FEELING of a big, crowded, immigrant-heavy city like new York, but I don't want to insult Actual New York with my ignorance." Our individual taste for research plays a part, too! And also...how important is it that the story be set In A Real City vs. Just capturing the feel of a city?
For me, I really want to touch on the regional experiences of the midwest, because there isn't a lot of fiction set here, and the huge swaths of wilderness make it convenient to establish these liminal zones where the living and the dead can mingle. I'm already offering so much strangeness there, that the rest of the world doesn't need more strange added. So that played a big part in how I chose my foundational rules.
You really do have this world-building stuff nailed down. Your second sentence alone shows that.
You ask a good question, I needed a New York style city but I needed it to be radically different. A more or less free energy source in my story led to a tidal wave of innovation from people all across all social boundaries and this erased any notion of superiority of one people over another. New York was too mired in it's own image to use.
The Midwest makes sense for your story too, and I'm not sure how much religion plays a part, but that would place it in the Bible belt, right? There's a ton of interesting ways you could take it from there.
Yeah, I don't know fuck-all about finishing a novel beyond a first draft, because I always get distracted by the world-building. Right now, I've got the one novel setting, and two game settings; the magipunk one we've already touched briefly on, and a traveling circus LARP that my family is developing. I'm wondering if maybe I'm more of a game designer than I am a novelist.
But when I play a character through a campaign, the story always comes out novel-shaped. 🤷♀️
This is why I so empathize with the spaghetti tactic.... throwing it to the wall and seeing if it sticks. 🤪
Exactly! Pulling from reality gives us so many convenient ways to reach our audience on an emotional level, where it really counts. I can describe a perfect pink rose, and not only do you get it, but you can also probably understand how giving pink roses is different from red roses as a gift, LOL!
But. Our audience is also there for something NOT reality. Whether they are seeking escape from the ordinary or a different perspective, or just a fun emotional journey, they want the comfort of the familiar mingled with the excitement of the strange and unusual, whether that unusual is a murder or a dragon.
I definitely had to figure this out with my last novel. It was set in Appalachia but paranormal im nature. It took a lot of decisions to determine how far about of the real world bounds I wanted to go because I wanted the story to be fairly grounded in reality.
It's interesting to compare my world to your article. The main city is essentially New York but I call it Grisham instead. Since I'm writing alternative history, I didn't want to spoil New York's history and I didn't think I could capture the essence of the city since I have never been there. This lead to more cities across the country being made for similar reasons and now, the only real cities I have are DC and San Francisco.
Yes, exactly! Write what you know becomes "I know the FEELING of a big, crowded, immigrant-heavy city like new York, but I don't want to insult Actual New York with my ignorance." Our individual taste for research plays a part, too! And also...how important is it that the story be set In A Real City vs. Just capturing the feel of a city?
For me, I really want to touch on the regional experiences of the midwest, because there isn't a lot of fiction set here, and the huge swaths of wilderness make it convenient to establish these liminal zones where the living and the dead can mingle. I'm already offering so much strangeness there, that the rest of the world doesn't need more strange added. So that played a big part in how I chose my foundational rules.
You really do have this world-building stuff nailed down. Your second sentence alone shows that.
You ask a good question, I needed a New York style city but I needed it to be radically different. A more or less free energy source in my story led to a tidal wave of innovation from people all across all social boundaries and this erased any notion of superiority of one people over another. New York was too mired in it's own image to use.
The Midwest makes sense for your story too, and I'm not sure how much religion plays a part, but that would place it in the Bible belt, right? There's a ton of interesting ways you could take it from there.
Yeah, I don't know fuck-all about finishing a novel beyond a first draft, because I always get distracted by the world-building. Right now, I've got the one novel setting, and two game settings; the magipunk one we've already touched briefly on, and a traveling circus LARP that my family is developing. I'm wondering if maybe I'm more of a game designer than I am a novelist.
But when I play a character through a campaign, the story always comes out novel-shaped. 🤷♀️
This is why I so empathize with the spaghetti tactic.... throwing it to the wall and seeing if it sticks. 🤪
Exactly! Pulling from reality gives us so many convenient ways to reach our audience on an emotional level, where it really counts. I can describe a perfect pink rose, and not only do you get it, but you can also probably understand how giving pink roses is different from red roses as a gift, LOL!
But. Our audience is also there for something NOT reality. Whether they are seeking escape from the ordinary or a different perspective, or just a fun emotional journey, they want the comfort of the familiar mingled with the excitement of the strange and unusual, whether that unusual is a murder or a dragon.
I definitely had to figure this out with my last novel. It was set in Appalachia but paranormal im nature. It took a lot of decisions to determine how far about of the real world bounds I wanted to go because I wanted the story to be fairly grounded in reality.