Monday, March 12, 2012

World descriptors

Hi everyone!  Thought I'd drop in for a Sunday post.  It has been a pretty lazy day so far.  I am coming off of a bout of writers block and have been trying to brainstorm new ideas for my middlegrade science fiction novel.  




Writers have the ability to be 'architects' and create new worlds--real or imaginary--from scratch.  It is like a superpower.  


For my current middle grade novel, there are a lot of scenic backdrops that I try to portray.  At the same time, there are difficulties in that I don't want to paint the entire story for the reader, and allow some of their own imagination to grab onto it and take it from there. 


Sometimes, I get stuck in a rut of wanting to use the same descriptions over and over.  One way to combat this is to take a camera anytime you leave the house--for a walk, trip the park, or vacation, and take photographs.  An idea I've been toying around with is creating a "setting journal" where I keep photographs of landscapes if I am in need of starting with a setting.  Here are some ideas: 


One is Las Vegas, Nevada: 


This is woods near Raleigh, NC
Anytime I think of World Building, I can't help but recollect the character, Slartibartfast, from "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams.  In this science fiction book, Slartibartfast creates worlds and designs them from scratch to populate the universe.


So there you have it.  Writers are basically the same thing as Slartibartfast.




What challenges have you had in terms of setting? 

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