srhevans1
Marvin The Paranoid Android
Posts: 82
|
Post by srhevans1 on Aug 15, 2016 18:45:26 GMT
Hello
I hope this makes sense. How important is setting? I want to set my novel in a big city, so I am setting it in Toronto because of familiarity and because I want to set it in Canada - not that that makes a big difference to the story. I am just wondering if there is anything else I should be thinking about when considering the setting? Thanks. Sarah
|
|
|
Post by Siana Blackwood on Aug 18, 2016 7:31:13 GMT
If you're using a real city, you want to make sure you stay true to the overall feel of that city - use the right words for things, mention real landmarks, have traffic problems at well-known trouble spots, use real or almost real names of radio stations... basically don't do anything that would make a local get angry about the impossibility of it. You can still invent new suburbs, change roads around, have some of your own landmarks etc. but make enough of it real that it still feels like Toronto.
Sort of true in spirit if not geography? Enough truth that the city is recognisable, enough made up so it can be fiction.
As far as how important the setting is, it can be anywhere from 'just some place for things to happen' all the way up to 'the setting is so important that it's practically a character'. It comes in multiple layers, too. Toronto might be just the place it happens, but things that happen to an important local landmark or building might be a symbol of the main character's emotional journey. For example, vandalism/damage happening at the same time as something that emotionally damages the character, and then as the repairs happen the MC also starts to recover. That's probably a bad example, but I think it sort of shows what I mean.
I guess... overall, just try to make everything that's mentioned in the story matter on multiple levels. Something like that, anyway. Like, it's never just 'the place the story happens'. Everyone in the story has a reason for being in that place, and a story about how they arrived there. The person who's lived there all their life in the same house five generations of her family were brought up in, has a different story to the person who escaped there from the other end of the country. Every decision you make gives you a little bit more information towards a bunch of other decisions.
|
|