To See or Not to See: Locking down the setting of your literary world

Hi everybody! Welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! I’m so glad you stopped by. As you know, this month we’re talking about writing first drafts—but more than that, we’re talking about it as though we’ve never written a book before, and need a few pointers to help get us on the right track. We’re talking about writing from the eyes of a newbie, someone who needs a little guidance to make sure they get the best possible words onto their pages, so they’ll be mildly less annoyed when it comes to the editing phase (don’t worry newbies, we’re all annoyed by editing. Even me, and I’m an editor).

Tuesday, we talked about discovering your genre. Today, let’s hone it in a little bit further.

To See or Not to See: Locking down the setting of your literary world

Remember, writers: even if you’re writing a fiction novel that takes place in the real world, you’re writing about a fictitious version of the real world, and therefore still need to decide on your setting and get a good handle on what everything looks like and where everything is, spatially.

Setting is one of those things that can take your book from good to completely amazing, particularly if you have a really good handle on where everything is located, on distances between things and places, and on time in general. Yes, I categorize time as a part of the setting, because time plays a large factor in what everything looks like (i.e. seasons change, so does your setting).

I personally like to sit down and write a long document that describes my setting. I don’t do this all the time, but especially if I’m just starting out on a new book, I find it extremely helpful to sit down and write what my world looks like, and how it works. Now, if you’re working with present day (or even past) Earth, you’ll have a much easier time of this. You’ll likely already know the big things you’ll need to know, and anything you don’t know, you can Google. Google Earth is your friend, if you write books set in the real world, present day.

But for me, my worlds are always different from Earth. I write science-fiction and fantasy, which means I generally have to make up whole new worlds, new realms, new methods of being.

Here’s a list of things you should know about your world, especially if you’re creating a new one:

• What does the architecture look like?
• How big are the cities?
• What do people eat? Where do they get their food?
• What do people drink? Where does their water come from?
• What happens to waste?
• Where do crops grow?
• What are the primary modes of travel, and how fast are they?
• What are the primary jobs people have?
• In what kind of buildings do people live? 
• What's the population of your main city(s)? 
• What happens to the poor? Where do they live? How do they survive?
• Where do people buy goods? 
• What do people do for fun? 
• What is the monetary system like? Is it consistent, throughout the world, or are there different monetary systems between countries (like there are in the real world)?

I could go on and on, honestly, but these are some of the basic things you’ll want to get a handle on, to make sure your story is as authentic as possible. So get out a pencil and paper, open a new Word document, Scrivener file, or what have you, and start writing. Describe what your main cities look like. Describe the people in their day to day lives. Discuss monetary issues, politics, waste and repairs, modes of travel, roadways, food production, anything you can think of that probably won’t have an impact on your story—but will play a small part in it, and therefore should be well thought out by you, the writer.

If you take the time to do this, before you start writing, your reader will be able to see it. I promise. The better you know your world, the more your readers will believe every single thing you write within that world. Why? Because if you answer the questions your readers never thought to ask, then it’ll never occur to them to ask those questions, later on. It’s all about creating realism, in every way we can.

Next week, we’ll get to the actual story writing part!

[love]

{Rani Divine}