Build Your Story: 8 Strategies for Writing Innovative Setting with Impact
Introduction Hungry Territory
As you have already seen, these categories overlap. It’s up
to the needs of the scene, the character, the tone, and the atmosphere to
choose which to highlight at a time. Territory
and Landmarks obviously connect. But
whereas last lesson we looked at the qualities of the specific landmark—here
we’re looking at the surrounding territory.
Even in a home or a spaceship the individual rooms could be
considered mini territories. Your questions now are with whom, other than
people, are your characters sharing their space with. Set up your key setting
like a painting. It’s marked on a map, in a chosen habitat landscape, and has a
focused landmark. What else lives there? What is visible? What stays hidden?
Let’s look at the questions from last lesson and expand them
to territory choices. As you choose specific landmarks for your novel world, especially
those that will remain constant through a series, ask these questions of each
key spot you choose.
Is it natural?
We’ll look at some other possibilities under danger, however for
now note how even the simplest inhabitant could create problems.
For example, I once knew a camp volunteer who was so allergic to
bees that she only had two minutes before going into deadly anaphylactic shock
if stung. Yet she refused to let that dictate her life. So she wore a
waterproof casing around her neck to hold her antidote so that she could hike
in the woods and canoe on the lake.
Turn this into a murder. What if someone tampered with her vial?
In her book Whodunit?
Billie A Williams has a chapter on deadly veggies. She explains how it is
possible to kill someone with high blood pressure by celery, which would only
be discovered if an autopsy was requested, and even then it might be ruled
accidental by natural causes. Overdose by sodium.
Maybe that beautiful garden on the corner is the domain of a
killer for hire who knows how to use natural ingredients as weapons. Puts a
whole new spin on organic, doesn’t it? Turn those possibilities into fantasy or
sci-fi. Get ready to kill off an ambassador in a delegation at a welcoming
banquet. However no one else is even mildly ill so it must have been natural
causes, hmm.
For farming communities think of what could go wrong with canning
or slaughter. I read of a true story of a family dying in the early 1900’s
because of eating pork. Only the infant baby and grandmother survived because
neither ate the meal. How sad.
Perhaps murder is not on your plotline but see where medical
emergencies could arise.
Share: What form of
natural murder or emergency did you discover in your territory?
Read deep, marcy
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