November 17, 2016

The Great Setting Round Up: 65 Possible Settings For Your Work-In-Progress!

November 17, 2016/ Lucy Flint

When it comes to inventing settings, I run out of imagination pretty fast. Especially when I'm in the middle of a drafting marathon. I'm spending my efforts juggling characters and conflicts, and I'm not really paying attention to where these characters and this conflict are happening.

Basically, I'd love to just set everything against a green screen and go from there!

But the dedicated writer in me knows that setting is a huge opportunity for shaking up a scene.

And since many of us are spending November drafting as quickly as possible, I thought I'd do a kind of setting round up, to help all of us out.

I'm not saying that these are all brand-new setting ideas you haven't considered before... but there's probably at least a few that might be good contenders for that one scene coming up.

Some are pretty basic, others are a bit more quirky ... and some are pretty out there. (Hey, why not?)

A lot of these ideas will depend on your characters and your story, and how the prompt would best work for you. Others are more scene elements (like weather) that you could layer into an existing setting to give it a little more oomph.

But whatever you're writing, I hope you'll find some fun ideas here to help you along!

Sound good? Here we go! In no order in particular, what if your scene took place in, on, or near:

A tree: in the trunk, or below the roots, standing on a massive stump, climbing the branches, or even up in a tree house
A quarry or a mine
A furnace or boiler room
An ornamental garden
Wherever they house the transportation: garage, airplane hangar, rocket storage facility, bicycle lot...
A specialty shop: for glass knick-knacks, ornamental clocks, fountain pens, marbles... (for some ideas, check this, this, this, and this!)
A sand bar in the middle of a river
Any kind of kennel, stable, or animal housing
A poison garden (yes really!)
A factory—maybe they make really basic everyday equipment, or maybe something ultra fancy and quirky and specialized—or maybe candy. Candy would be great.
The sewer system or some network of underground tunnels
An abandoned/ruined hospital or asylum
A cave
A plant nursery
Your antagonist's favorite landmark: something extra-special from your antagonist's personal history
The place where the people in your storyworld exercise: whether that means a track for running, a place for boxing or heaving weights, or training in whatever way
An orchard or vineyard
On top of something that they'd normally be traveling in: like a train, bus, car, subway, submarine, spaceship...
Someplace where the air isn't good to breathe: maybe after a chemical accident, or a place that vents poisonous vapors from underground, or maybe the scene of a diabolical attack... wherever they are, the air is bad.
A river crossing—maybe a ferry, or a footbridge, or stepping stones, or some kind of natural formation
The place of greatest historical significance to your characters, their families, their government, or their storyworld: where the town was founded, where a great victory was won, where an old hero died, etc.
A hot air balloon
A field of grass, crops, or a pumpkin patch
A laboratory
The house of a person not in the scene... especially if that person would hate that they're there
How about in a sinkhole? (Hey, it could happen!)
Your storyworld's tallest building: put some clouds below your characters' feet!
An immense beach: maybe a scuzzy, sludgy, awful one where you'd expect to find dead bodies, or maybe one that's packed with a zillion people, and, I don't know, a couple hundred corgis? Or maybe a sandcastle-making competition?
A symphonic concert, a play, an opera, or a rock concert. Maybe in the crowd, or backstage, or heck, onstage in the midst of the action...
A lighthouse, beacon, or some sort of signaling tower
A graveyard, cemetery, mausoleum, or a morgue
At some kind of studio—for ceramics, or painting, or dancing
A desert
An unusual staircase (check out these amazing spirals!)
Standing on ice (because slippery footing is always interesting and maybe even metaphorical...). Maybe in the middle of a parking lot, or maybe the middle of a lake
Wherever they might be if one of the participants in the scene is in a casket (dead or alive, your choice!)
A greenhouse
A coat closet, storage closet, or locker space
An underground bunker or house—especially if it's deeper underground than your character would like to be
Any place with ancient statuary, whether it's something major, like Stonehenge or Easter Island, or something tiny, and known only to a handful of characters in your storyworld
Some kind of wind tunnel, or any place where your characters have to talk or fight against the wind
In the middle of a lake, pond, ocean, on something other than a boat
A desert oasis!
The set of a film (a major Hollywood production, or a tiny indie film, or even a home movie) or a photo shoot
The banks along a river
An escalator, elevator, or moving sidewalk
The cockpit of a plane that's maybe about to crash...
A stolen boat (or yacht, or pirate ship, or cruise liner...)
The tree in the forest that's haunted, cursed, the oldest, or just plain weirdest
A war memorial or some other local monument
Somewhere "behind the scenes" in your storyworld's most glamorous hotel—in the laundry area or the staff room or the cleaning closet, perhaps?
A museum—whether especially grand, or tiny and quirky, or some specific niche. It could play to what your character most loves or most hates, or whatever most makes him/her uneasy...
At (or behind, or under...) a waterfall
An especially strange forest: maybe one that's crooked, intricate, despairing, massive, or just especially beautiful
A quicksand pit, bog, marshy area, or mud slick
An observatory
In the midst of a mist
At a funeral, visitation, or wake, of someone your characters may or may not know
Or at a wedding, engagement party, bridal shower, or baby shower (and again, they might not know the people involved!)
At the source of a river (oooh, great literary resonance in that)
A rooftop with an incredible view
A library
A "field" of something manmade—like windmills, solar panels, fog catchers
Someplace where the characters aren't supposed to be at the zoo—the lion's cage, perhaps?
Whatever kind of setting is the total opposite of the conversation/action taking place: clearing up mundane information at a soaring, glitzy setting, or having an explosive discussion on the soup aisle at the local store.

And there you go! I hope a few of these triggered some fun new setting ideas for your story. Good luck!

By the way: if you checked out a few of the links, you'll also see that Atlas Obscura is one of my all-time favorite sites for anything setting related.

They just published an excellent book that I looooooove, and they send out fantastic daily emails if you sign up. Plus the site is just incredible to explore! Highly recommended resource for stirring our writerly imaginations: check 'em out! You just might browse for ages!

PS: And just to clarify, this isn't an affiliate link or affiliate anything. I just love their work and want everyone to know about them!

November 03, 2016

My Best Advice for Sticking with Nanowrimo (or Any Fierce Drafting Project!)

November 03, 2016/ Lucy Flint

Happy November, and Happy NaNoWriMo to all my crazy scribblers!!

I'm not doing NaNoWriMo this year, but I am doing my own version of a writing marathon. I'm taking aim at my long-suffering work-in-progress, and I'm going to marathon through to see how far I can get with it in November.

... Because if you're going to try and work at an astonishing pace, November is the time to do it! ;)

Before we get into today's post, I have a little housekeeping announcement for you lionhearts.

First off: thank you SO much for being kind and patient with me as I took October off to replenish. Oh my gosh. It was the BEST possible thing I could have done. I'm feeling so much better!

Secondly: I've been looking at my writing goals and my writing pace over the last year. 2016 has been a tough year for my work-in-progress. October's break from blog production helped out my novel so much that I've decided to make a change to the blogging schedule.

Starting this month,
I'm going to post just two articles a month.

And we'll just see how that goes for a while.

Why two articles? Well, for one, I can never manage to write short posts. You probably noticed, haha!

I've tried—really I have!—but I'm always wanting to cram them full of all the info and supporting detail that I can muster. ... I always figure that if a topic is resonating for someone, I wanna make sure they get everything valuable that I can give them on that topic.

But, I get it: that can be overwhelming to keep up with, both as a reader and a writer!

In the past year and a half (has it been that long?!) I've written about so many of the writing topics that are close to my heart. I have been able to say a lot of what I most wanted to say about writing. (Have you been able to check out the Archives yet? They're bursting!)

So a more gentle pace with blogging seems the way to go, at least for now. Expect to see me here on the first and third Thursday of every month!

Sound okay? Any questions? Just let me know in the comments. (Also, if there's something about the writing life that I haven't really tackled yet, or if there's something you'd love to hear more about, please do let me know!)

And thanks so much, as always, for being the awesome bunch of lionhearts that you are. You encourage me so much, and I'm so privileged to be writing alongside you!

Speaking of writing...

Let's talk about mega-fast drafting, marathon writing, and NaNoWriMo.

Whenever I charge into some speedy drafting goals—like NaNoWriMo, or my self-designed drafting marathons—I always start by getting really clear on my purpose.

NaNoWriMo is such a huge event: it's become one of those rites of passage for writers today. Something to aim for, something to try at least once.

Which is great! But before you get swept too far along, you need to grab a little bit of time to check in with why you are doing it.

What's the point?

If you are doing this crazy cliff-dive of a writing exercise, what's the goal? What are you aiming for?

Here. I'll let you think for a sec. ...

The reason why I love NaNoWriMo, why I love drafting marathons, is because of the core goal.

The goal is what shapes the whole experience; the goal is what makes it.

Because the goal of NaNoWriMo isn't perfect writing.

Heck, the goal isn't even GOOD writing.

The goal is: Mass ink.

Word-shaped blotches and sentence-like creations and LOTS of 'em.

For a recovering perfectionist, overachiever, and overthinker, this kind of drafting marathon feels like the craziest kind of indulgence. Abandon expectations. Abandon most-to-all standards. In a race like this, they'll just hold you back.

NaNoWriMo is about momentum and velocity, and it feels more than a little dangerous at times.

It's risky.

It's risky in the same way that running down a steep hill is risky, and I do it for the same reasons—

To see if maybe I start flying.

Or if at least I'll feel like I'm flying.

Only instead of wings, we're sprouting a glider made out of words and pages, and seeing if maybe, just maybe, our feet lift off the ground for a while.

When you're moving this fast through storyland, after all, it has a way of seizing you.

You start living half-in and half-out of two realities: There's your day-to-day "real" life concerns (food and errands and whoa, actual humans)—

And there's the world of your story, your characters pressing in around you, holding onto your sleeve, putting their hands in your pockets, telling you secrets.

We do NaNoWriMo because, when we drop the bar of our expectations, and when we run in the biggest writerly wolfpack ever, something happens.

We literally achieve liftoff.

Even if you don't "finish" NaNoWriMo, even if you don't "win," you still get the experience of making a run for it.

Barreling across the plains of story, galloping faster than maybe you ever have before.

Do it for the rush, for the thrill, for the crazy swooping sensation in your stomach as your story grabs your hands and waltzes you across whole continents.

Let your NaNoWriMo goal be: that rush.

Chuck perfection and standards; burn your outline if it gets in your way; and do whatever you can to get close to the heart of your story.

Don't worry, quite so much, about words per day. Filling out that word count graph can feel like the main goal, but I promise it's not the main thing to worry about.

So instead of asking, "How can I crank out even more words," try asking: What can I add to this scene that would thrill me?

Because the best way to write a ton of words is to answer that question. That's when your word counts will start shocking you.

Ask some follow-ups:

How can I love writing about this character more? What quirks, traits, inner darkness, or outer hope can I layer into them that would keep me engaged while I write?
What curve to the conflict would pull me to the edge of my seat? How can I weird up the story a bit? How can I add all my favorite story traits to it? What would keep me entertained?
What settings would I just love to pepper my story with? What do I want to explore with words?

Start answering those questions in your draft, and you'll find that the words and the masses of ink take care of themselves.

For the record, this is my best advice for NaNoWriMo, or for finishing any draft well. This is what has always worked the best for me.

When you're worrying about quality, remind yourself that your real goal is just: tons of words on pages.

And if you find yourself worrying about how to write tons of words, throw that goal out the window, and just ask: What gets me excited, really excited, in a story?

And start sprinkling—no, dumping—that into your draft. You'll feel the difference immediately.

You just might start flying.

I'll check back in with you in two weeks with a big inspiration post, which I'm super excited about!

But til then, if you're looking for more NaNoWriMo cheerleading, check out this post on diving in, this post on the main NaNoWriMo fear (and why it's not true), and this undervalued—but super useful!—writing strategy.

Finally, here are 50 plot twist ideas... one of them is sure to bail you out of your next plot conundrum!

Best of luck—and happy flying!!