Week 1: Setting

Welcome to World Building week 1.  We're going to get the most important part out of the way and figure out the setting of our novels.  Depending on what type of story you're writing, this is going to range to a setting you already know to a setting that is stuck in your head.  We'll go through both, along with giving some tips for both, and see how it goes along.

First off, we're going to need to figure out where you are and what type of setting you're dealing with.  We'll break them down into three categories - real world, AU Earth, and second world.  These can be used for all genres, although you might figure out that the speculative genre deals a bit more with AU Earth and second world more than real world. That doesn't mean that real world cannot exist in fantasy but, for the most time, it doesn't because you're introducing something that our real world doesn't have (like magic).

Like I explained briefly above, real world should be self explanatory as it is the real world.  You are using the setting of the world around us, either during this time period or one in the past. This would not include the near or distant future because we don't know what's going to happen. A lot of genres written in real world are mystery / thriller, chick lit, general fiction... the list goes on. One of my favorite real world novels is Prayer for Owen Meany which deals with the Vietnam War and how it effects two very different people who are unlikely friends.  There is more to it than that, but it deals with a real world setting.  However, like I said above, you usually do not find the speculative genre here as that deals with things that we do not have in the real world. However, they are involved heavily in the next two.

The near or distant future setting, to me, is known as AU Earth.  You are using the setting of Earth but you are putting your spin on it.  It's the year 3050 and we have to abandon Earth because of an environmental crisis would be AU Earth and, depending on the plot of your novel, second world.  Even just jumping about 30 years into the future, like I do in Mystery of the Dark, is AU Earth because we don't know where we'll be in 30 years.  Also, I have vampires.  AU Earth is also where you put something that we don't have on Earth, like vampires or other supernatural figures, and this is where speculative fiction lives a lot of the time. We're introducing something that is not involved in the real world that we have and, therefore, it is an alternative view of the world we have now. Or, you twist history in some way, either by going back in time or events happened differently than it did in our written history. Hitler won the Second World War is a highly popular AU Earth plot where you would need to decide, through your outlining, what part of the Earth is under Hitler and which is under others. Another is the JFK assassination and what would have happened if he survived. That is AU Earth and the different ways that it can be imagined. My favorite examples of AU Earth is the Harry Potter series, Under the Dome, Good Omens, and the Temeraire series.  There are a ton more, but those are my top four of the moment.

The third, second world, is where you are creating a world all of your own.  You might model it on Earth but it isn't Earth.  You are calling it something else but you have the basic geography, air quality, what have you, but, in the end, it's not our world.  A lot of fantasy settings are set on a second world that, while it might be like Earth in some ways, isn't.  This is the setting that is the most time consuming but, in the end, the most satisfying.  You're taking a world, that is in your head, and giving it life via maps and whatever else you decide to write down. This is the other part where speculative fiction lives because a lot of fantasy novels and science fiction novels create their own worlds. J.R.R. Tolkien's works are all prime examples of second world and he really needs to be held up as the shining example of world building.  He has maps, different languages, this long history (hello Silmarillion to name one), and so on. George RR Martin is another who has a ton of world building that he created a second world of. Stephen King did the same with the Dark Tower series and how you can see tendrils of it in a lot of his books. Now, for your second world, you do not need to be that detailed but those are examples that you can go and look at for inspiration.

For me and my NaNo project, I am debating between a real world setting for a mystery and my AU Earth world in Mystery of the Dark.  Both have their own pros and cons.  The pros for real world mystery is I can go to the place that I'm thinking in my head and write it. People know where I'm talking about when I say where the characters are unless I choose to invent a city.  Now, this is still real world, because I am in the here and now and all of history is still the same and so on, but I have the option of making my own little traditions and quirks and so on.  Also, I think it might work better to have a small to mid-size town mystery vs a big city mystery.  It is something to think about.  The con of this is the fear of sounding weird because I've never lived in a small town.  Do I have people I can ask about it? Yep, but I don't have that experience. I do have the experience of living in a small to mid size college town, so I think I might work that in.  We'll see.

Likewise, the pro of Mystery of the Dark is that I know the setting and this is our world but in 2050. And there's vampires and werewolves and other supernatural beings.  There's magic.  It is AU Earth.  So I have the pro from the real world setting that I can say where a character is and people understand it from the name. The challenge or con is that I'm going to be using a city that I've never been to before nor do I have the time to go to. However, I know people who have lived there and I could poke them about it. I also worry about being a bit cliche about using this city - it's New Orleans - but not for vampires. It's a werewolf hub but still, worried about that.

In the end, there's a lot of similarities and a ton of difference in my two possible projects for NaNo. We'll see which one I go to in the end. What type of world do you like to play in for your setting, dear readers? Feel free to leave a comment below and, until next time, keep on plotting (or writing)!

Helpful Exercise: The World Basics from Patricia C. Wrede.  When you're done with those, you might want to physical and historical features if you have time / are up to it.