Build A Story World

“The work begins with a deep breath and a blindly trusting step into the unknown.” Susan Cooper

Cross-culture—time dimension

Across time dimension includes time within the same world history, such as a novel in an historical setting crossing generations on a family plantation.  Or in a city that we see grow from a seaport to a major world hub similar to the history of  New York City or San Francisco.

And time dimension also covers time travel backwards or forwards, such as Back to the Future series. It also includes time across space, such as Farscape or Stargate, and time into a parallel dimension, such as a spiritual dimension, or any other realm that is accessed through a portal of some kind like Dante’s trilogy and the land of faerie. Time may pass by on equal ground, be compressed, or expanded.

Look for key places that can hold common ground across many centuries, and also capabilities than can be inherited. They can carry both the foundation of setting and the echo of atmosphere. It could carry the weight of the pyramids in Egypt, or a coastal town set on a rocky cliff in Ireland, or Greece or alongside a river like the Rhine or the Mississippi.

Damar, Part One

For example, Robin McKinley sets two novels in the fictional land of Damar separated by a considerable time span. They can be read in any order without sacrificing their stories due to the integral setting that overlaps each novel. McKinley has provided a vivid setting that has the potential to expand into more episodes in Damar, either past or present or future, by holding to the setting atmosphere and characteristics which make Damar unique to itself, and influence whatever characters come into its sphere.

Exercise: Choose an important location in your setting and list the details that make it so. Using those details, write up a legend about it that could be found in an historical article or sightseeing brochure.

Share: Which detail can play a major part in the current time plot?

Metaphors

In her essay “Talent Is Not Enough,” taken from her book on writing for children of the same title, Mollie Hunter says that a writer is like a person locked in a cell for life, who learns things they desperately want to convey and develops a code to tap out the messages on the wall of the cell. “And all the time he taps he is asking himself, Is there anyone out there listening? Can they hear me? Do they understand?”

Often times the words come out in metaphors that we need to decipher, even to ourselves. We are drawn to truths before we may know what they mean. Each of us may only glimpse pieces. So we need to share together to see the whole. Metaphors give us the creative imagination to see truth in fresh ways. And to repackage them when they’ve become clichés.

A Christmas Carol, by Dickens has become a well-worn, well-loved story that touches multiple themes. The characters themselves have become familiar echoes. It’s a holiday favorite, and yet after how many times watching do we think we know the story and may have forgotten key parts? Heart parts.

On a Christmas special, the Dr. Who series re-told the story with familiarity and yet such differences spread throughout that kept viewers on their toes. From set design to story line, past and future merged. The streets resembled Dickens’ England and yet felt odd enough to wonder what had changed, pulling you into the story immediately. For one example, the set designers had made everything out of steel riveted together. And all the windows were round or half-round. Not noticed immediately, or perhaps not at all, until reading the production notes but the effect had a metaphoric impact.

Journal Prompt:

Take one aspect of your setting and replace a few natural parts with another texture. They make be the same color and shape but different. Do one version is subtle tones and another as wildly opposite. How does it change the view?

For example: Take a main street and turn all the wooden buildings into another material, but keep same shape. Or turn all the buildings into breathing wood.

Metaphors

An evocative setting often provides a powerful effect as a silent messenger through metaphors. It may be the truth behind the story that will last with thematic impact long after the characters/events are themselves forgotten.

In the historical romance “A Memory Between Us,” by Sarah Sundin, there are many opportunities for the external visual scenes to connect to an internal heart connection, making a metaphoric bridge to connect us to a deeper understanding of her characters.

For example, in chapter eleven as they stroll “down the street and through the imposing Norman Gate Tower. Jack pointed out the slits in the thick stone walls.” They walk into a circular garden where a man plays a violin to a group of children. Jack lays down his jacket so Ruth doesn’t snag her stockings on the black, white and gray stones protruding from the mortar. And then too there’s the watch—time moving forward.

The setting is steeped in history—part of a ruined abbey. And right now that is how Ruth views her own life, as in ruins. She struggles between emotions that are black, white and gray as she finds herself drawn to Jack, and at the same time pushes him away. It’s interesting that Ruth considers it stupid that the ancient building were torn down in the Reformation. She has thick emotional walls surrounding her but there a few slits opening and Jack is coming through them. Maybe she also has a premonition, or fear, that her wall will be smashed too. But often our walls have to come down so healing can take place. Which begins a few paragraphs on as they prepare to dance and Ruth finds herself sobbing in his arms.

“Now the tears flowed in an unrelenting stream. Folded in Jack’s arms, she could be weak, she could grieve, she could be nurtured.” (And can’t you just hear the violin still playing.) She feels safe, she weakens, he kisses her, she melts, and then all the past ugliness rises up to poison the moment. In her sorrow and hurt she then lashes out at Jack, and steps back into the ruins of her heart.

Journal Prompt:

Make a list of similar settings you’ve chosen for your novel. Are there connecting images? Choose one that connects to a choice, or a secret, or a fear that your character is hiding. Rewrite the scene using it as a silent metaphor.