Hot answers tagged setting
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'Setting' is not the same as 'place' or 'world.' All of which are close enough in definition but since you said crime fiction I think what you meant is the setting, even though you go on to say 'the place' but let's cut to the chase and see what's going on here: Edit: I swear I'd read 'place' somewhere in the Q!
Place:
This's a subset of 'setting.'
The ...
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From a story standpoint, you have, more or less, two choices: Recount what's come before the current book, or embed critical information in the narrative itself. The more realistic it is for characters to talk about past events, the less need there'll be for a summary of events at the beginning of the book. But if you want the book to seem like a grand ...
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The first step is to hold back your urge to write. First do your homework, thoroughly.
Learn. Learn a whole lot about the place.
Start with Google StreetView and Panoramio.
Proceed through Wikipedia to learn not just about the place but about landmarks, anything in the area.
Find movies, amateur videos, anything to take place around there.
Read blogs of ...
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This question was famously addressed by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking Glass:
Glen Downey's The Truth About Pawn Promotion: The Development of the Chess Motif in Victorian Fiction explores the metaphor extensively.
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Get someone else to read the story and point out the sections that would require more fleshing out. As the author your perception of the text is tainted with the imagination of the scene. Things that appear obvious to you may be entirely unclear for the reader. The talent to forget what you know and read the story you wrote as if you'd have read it the first ...
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You can do both. You can start from an existing city (maybe give it a new name) and change the areas which do not fit (GTA comes into mind).
If you have already an idea for the setting like "Oh, that should play in New Orleans" because of the (cliched) reputation of that city, then go with that. Your New Orleans does not need to be square inch by square ...
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Whatever works best for your story.
If you can make it work in a real setting and you know or can research the setting well enough to make it work, do that.
If your story requires something which doesn't exist, is or is not against a particular law, needs a river to be here rather than there, etc. then invent a place.
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Focus on the effect you are trying to create in the reader. Maybe the most important of those is the emotional impact you are trying to create.
Then: Choose the details that help to create that emotional impact. What details would help us to understand the character better? To understand what the character wants, and why it's so important to them? To ...
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The strong appeal of the squares on the board as settings for a story lies (at least in part) in their spatial relationship with one another (within the game of chess).
Although e4 and f4 appear to be contiguous, the knight cannot move directly from one to the other. Your story might be based upon the notion that not all locations are equally accessible to ...
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I have faced the same problem. Going to professional editors/critique groups didn't help, as they all want you to rewrite the story as they would. Which is why you get scenes that spend a whole paragraph describing what the character wears.
Here's what worked for me. Imagine you are standing in the scene in your novel. Describe the scene as your main ...
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What is your purpose in writing about a foreign country or place? Do you intend the setting to be integral to your story? If so, and you have never been there, then you are probably facing a considerable challenge. You simply do not have the background to inject the elements of authentic detail that will be required.
On the other hand, if your aim is simply ...
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If you want to have a series of books which tell an ongoing story, but you want readers to be able to drop in midway, you will of necessity need to recap something in the beginning. How you do it depends on your skill and comfort level.
In the Harry Potter books, it was basically just narration in the opening chapter. This does run the risk of being ...
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You have two basic choices:
(1) Begin each book with a narrative synopsis of previous books or whatever background is required. Like have an intro titled, "The story so far" or some such, and then summarize the previous books. Advantages of this is that it is straight-forward and clear to the reader, and someone who has read and remembers the previous books ...
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If you want the outside layout and a small glimpse of the inside of Chernobyl NPP, follow John Smithers' advice: grab a copy of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl, read a game guide on how to get the "Good Ending" and play it through. The authors took only minimal amounts of artistic liberties while re-creating the outside layout of the NPP, and while the ...
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