Seeing the setting

[shamguy4]

every so often I get feelings in my gut asking me why I chose a futuristic setting? My book takes place in a small galaxy. Its how i've always seen it.

I guess I chose that because I know more about technology and stuff better than I do about knights in shining armor.

I also have an issue seeing a setting sometimes.
I began to wonder what if it took place in a world that was futuristic, just not a galaxy. Just another world...
-But i cant see it. No matter how hard I try, my mind cant come up with the map in my head and I wonder how others deal with scenes or stories where they cant 'see' the setting?

Sometimes I look up pictures online whether real or fantasy art on deviantart.com to get ideas but it does not always work out....

How can I 'See' my setting so I know i have chosen right?

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

This is a very profound question, and difficult to answer.

I might suggest that you start small. Try to imagine what your main character experiences directly. What do you see? What do you hear? What do you feel, smell, taste?

From here you can build your world from the ground upward. Trying to come up with a whole galaxy (even a "small" one) is a daunting task; does your story have to be on so vast a scale?

 

[shamguy4]

Firstly you should know I suck at directions and I think that greatly ruins my perception of a setting. I need my GPS at all times!


For some reason, small galaxy i can do. One planet at a time. I can see it, maybe because I have watched so many sci-fi stuff. Its easy for my brain to make planets and how they work, and traveling through empty space seems easy for my brain. i guess i see planets as small chunks of land.


What I cannot do is zoom in and make separate terrains. Its too confusing for me. It only wokrs as I write where my character walks and goes and slowly i make it up.
For instance, i was thinking of creating an island for a part in my book. In my head I see a tiny island, with a few trees. You know the kind you get marooned on...

I cannot see a whole huge city on an island, it just wont work in my head...

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Start with one object inside one room in one building. Imagine it as vividly as you can. What does this one object tell you about the world in which it exists? Go from there to imagine other objects, other rooms, other buildings. Soon you will have a strong feel for your imagined city, without having to keep a map of it in your head.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

This is one of the reasons I struggle with description; I am so focused on the characters in my case that I forget the world. They could be in any room, anywhere. My advice would be to take it scene by scene. Fill it out slowly. After four years of forcing description, I can see most of my settings now, but it took time.

 

[Gumboot]

The idea of not being able to envisage my story is pretty alien to me. I'm very much a visual person (no surprise, I work in a visual industry) and always have been. If I couldn't envisage a story, I simply wouldn't be able to write it. So although I can't imagine what it's like to write a story without "seeing" it, I can at least appreciate that it must be very, very difficult.

 

[jastius]

can you do a stick figure outline of a scene? block it out? then think out your story, blocking it out as you go? then you can make a few decisions about where you are in this world you are creating. its like a you are here map in a shopping mall. at first it doesn't make sense until you look at it and look around. just get out your graph paper and map as you write. you will have to redo things but you'll figure it out. just remember to use the graph paper.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I started thinking about this. Not always useful but hey-ho. I don't write good description until nailed to a seat and made to, but I, apparently, write good dialogue. The thing is I can hear, and see, my characters as they talk to each other. Which is, I think, what makes it more natural. To those who struggle with dialogue - do you actually hear your characters speaking. (Yes, yes, I may be a little odd, who knows?) do we visualise different things in our stories, and if so, do they have an impact on how confidently/smoothly we write those aspects?

If so, Shamguy, what do you visualise strongly? People, buildings, spaceships? Make those the focus of your story - you can drip some description in as you fill the story out?

 

[Phyrebrat]

It only wokrs as I write where my character walks and goes and slowly i make it up.
For instance, i was thinking of creating...

It may be that you're more worried than you need to be. The reader will experience your world from the perspective of the main character, or whoever has POV in the particular scene you have written.

Largely the details of your world will be drip fed into the story by the characters apart from, say, larger concepts.

Have you written anything, or are you trying to plan it all first? I prefer the bnuilder approach as opposed the architect appraoch and like Springs, I find more and more these days that the characters and the reader themselves get the world across - my job is simply to tell a good ol yarn.

However, I do not write epic fantasy or sci-fi so a lot of my world building happens by a process of osmosis...

pH

 

[Sunseal]

I always find it helps to imagine you're watching your scene... like a film. I often close my eyes and watch the scene unfold in my head... I can see the characters and where they're stood; I can hear their voices and I try and get an idea of smells etc. For example if they're stood next to a burning wood fire I try and get a real sense of the smell... I find it helps me to build the whole picture.
That also helps when you come to a halt in a scene and find that you can't go any further. Literally close your eyes, go back to the beginning of the scene and play it through like you're watching a film. Go as far as you can - what would the characters do next? How could they end up in the next section?
Once you start thinking "Hmm... no... this wouldn't happen in a film." or - "If this was a book, I wouldn't particularly go much on this part", then go back to the point when it was making you smile and write it all down.
I find doing this helps to bring so much detail to the characters and settings... to the point where I see them doing little quirks that I hadn't thought of until I saw them to it in my mind.

 

[shamguy4]

@phyrebrat
@springs
Yeah i usually just write and the scene plays out and sort of er... buffers in.
So my character is walking down a corridor, my brain automagically sees what is ahead for about 10 minutes, and that is how I build my world.

Sometimes I'm lucky and the whole scene just falls into my brain.

But right now my major dilemma was trying to see my whole book in different settings and it seems very hard.


Till now it has taken place in a small galaxy. My main character lives on this huge space station. If he looks out the window he sees darkness shattered with some colorful nebulas far off.... My bad guy is far far away....

Now lately I have been pondering what it would be like if the whole book took place on 1 futuristic planet.
I see my character still living on some sort of floating device, but it suddenly has shrunk to the size of an airplane. When he looks out the window he sees everything, including my bad guy whose waving up at him!

The world has shrunk and I cannot seem to see it as vast as I would want to.... So I cannot find a way to glimpse what my book would be like on one planet.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I make scrapbooks - use the photographs I can find of things that will work and sketch/draw buildings I can't or make them as close as I can using Minecraft etc. I spent a few days using Minecraft to build a row of redbrick terraced houses

Don't laugh this is the scrapbook I did for my epicish otherworldly fantasy
Mayhem - Scrapbooks. I also have a notebook full of really naff sketches but they help me with the visuals. The toy chime ball is with the help of chrisp is what inspired the idea of a flat world inside a crystal.