Category: Ex-Heroes

While doing about a dozen articles for Creative Screenwriting and waiting for the release of Ex-Heroes, I’ve been poking at another clever idea for a novel (I hope) which jumped into my head one night while driving past a graveyard. One of the biggest elements is coming up with a believable moon base for the 23rd century. Sure, it would be easy to scribble out pages about oxygen generators and gravity plates and all that, but I like to make things as believable as possible. I also firmly believe in the plusses and minuses of capitalism, and how I predict they’ll affect space travel in the future.

About the same time, while skimming through piles of astronomy books, I noticed something on a message board I frequent. One of the semi-regular readers here (a whopping 10% of you, by all available numbers) who also posts there was asking questions about a location she wanted to use in a story she was working on.

As a wise man once said… link up here, link up there.

So, hey, let’s talk a bit about settings.

The setting is the when and where your story takes place. Simple, right? Some folks would argue it’s almost a character in its own right, because where you set your story can have a great effect on how the story is told. I’d agree, to the extent I think you should put at least as much thought into a story’s location as you would into one of your single-name supporting characters.

For all our intents and purposes, there are three types of settings.

A historical setting is one which takes place somewhere in the recorded past. It is limited to the world as it existed at that given time period, despite what the author may know happened later. Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo is a tale with a historical setting, as is The Alienist by Caleb Carr. Braveheart was set against the backdrop of history, and so were Titanic and Public Enemies. If you’ve got premium cable, Deadwood and Mad Men are two series that used a historical setting.

Note that a historical setting doesn’t mean this has to be a 100% true story. More than half the tales I listed above are fictional or heavily fictionalized. There weren’t really two star-crossed lovers with a huge emerald sailing on the Titanic, but it was still set entirely in its respective time period and was true to that period.

A modern setting is set in the real world, usually within the past ten or fifteen years. It uses modern technology, terminology, and so on. Most television shows are set in the modern world for the simple reason it’s cheaper to film. Stephen King puts most of his stories in a modern setting, as do Thomas Harris, Dean Koontz, Michael Crichton, and countless others.

Again, a modern setting is not always a true, factual story. Castle Rock, Maine is not a real place. Stars Hollow, Connecticut does not exist. There also isn’t an occult library over the SoHo coffee shop in San Diego. However all of these places confirm to the rules (well, the overwhelming majority of the rules) of the world we see them in.

An imaginary setting is one which involves imagined locations, usually in an entirely imagined world. It’s anything the writer has to create mostly from the ground up—sci-fi, fantasy, future, and so on. Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry is imaginary, as are Miskatonic University and Starfleet Academy. The worlds of Perth, Gallifrey, Vulcan, and Caprica were all created by their respective writers. While there are numerous uncharted islands in the South Pacific, I feel safe saying none of them are home to numerous ghosts and dueling Egyptian gods.

This is one of the hardest settings to pull off, as the writer needs to create an entire believable reality. You need to be able to answer questions which may not ever come up in your story and also come up with consistent ways for things to work under the new rules of this new world. Even an imaginary world needs boundaries and limits, after all. Can magic really do anything? Has mankind actually reached another galaxy in just five hundred years? Did Abraham Lincoln or JFK surviving change the world that much?

That brings up another point about the imaginary setting. It’s even tougher, sometimes, deciding what doesn’t need to be changed or created. What parts can you just leave the same as the real world? Measurements? Currency? This strange thing called love?

Now, one other little note before we move on. As important as the setting is, it’s still just the backdrop. It isn’t always directly connected to what’s happening in front of it. We can still write fantasy stories set in the real world. That’s why aliens can help build the pyramids in a historical setting. But note there’s a big difference between a world where aliens help build the pyramids as intergalactic trail markers and a world where these aliens are fought off by the combined magical might of sorcerers from Egypt, Babylon, and Rome.

So, how do you make a solid setting, of any type? Pretty much the same way you’d make a character. You just make it as believable as possible.

If you’re using a modern or historical setting, actually know the place you’re talking about. Spend time there if you can (it’s no coincidence most of my stories are set in Los Angeles, San Diego, or New England). If you can’t travel there, read every book you can. Look at every picture. Every place is unique, and it will be your job as a writer to learn those little (and not so little) tics that make them what, where, and when they are. 21st century London is very different from 15th century London, after all. Los Angeles and Boston each have their own unique vibes. Romeo & Juliet and West Side Story line up point for point, but the setting makes them two very different stories. When you get these points right, the millions of people who live in–or know of–these locations will commend you for it and raise their estimate of your story a few notches.

That also ties to the biggest danger with a modern or historical setting– people will know if you get things wrong. Lots of people. Your potential audience lives in the real world, so they’ll catch on if you’ve got characters sitting on a beach in Maine watching the sunset across the water. They’ll cry foul if you claim it’s a forty minute drive from London to Cardiff. And they’ll call shenanigans if you say the taxicabs in Cairo are bright yellow (they’re black and white—blue and white in Luxor, and all white in Aswan).

And then they’ll toss your work into that large pile on the left and go get lunch.

Even imaginary settings should be unique. The world of Barsoom is very different from the world of Hoth. The future of Rendezvous with Rama is not the future of Terminator: Salvation, and neither of them resembles the future world Buck Rogers found himself in.

Once you know your world, you have to be consistent with it. We can’t have Army grunts one minute and the highly advanced U.S. laser battledroid squadron the next (or first—I’m pointing at you, George Lucas). Magic shouldn’t be something extremely rare until it conveniently starts flowing like water. Alien invaders who can build interstellar starships shouldn’t be baffled by doorknobs and stairs. In the same way it’s annoying when characters randomly act out of character, it can frustrate a reader when the entire world suddenly bends to suit the momentary needs of the story–or for no real reason at all.

And there you have it. Some random musings on story settings.

Next week… well, we all have to deal with it sometime. We’re going to talk about the end.

But keep writing until then.

Yes, we’ve hit a bold new level here at the ranty blog. People are making requests for me to pontificate about things. Well, one person is. Still, there’s only about seven of you looking at this, so that still puts it up around 14% of the readership giving feedback and asking for specific topics to be covered.

Anyway, by request, let’s talk about nomenclature, as the fancy folk like to call it.

As a wise man once said, all things that men fear have a name. To expand off that, pretty much everything has a name, especially in the world of fiction. Try to write for more than a few pages without naming something and you’ll see how difficult it gets. The unnamed thing may be scary as hell, but it’s also very difficult to write about. So we give names to the things that scare us (even if that name is just ‘It’) and to the characters who fight those things, and even to the people who just stand on the sidelines, oblivious and unaware.

Now, one school of thought is that character names are specific and symbolic things. That a writer has a very specific reason for naming him John and her Elizabeth. They hint at a character’s true nature, or perhaps they’re grim hints at their ultimate fates. Said school is why that character has a Shakespearean name, this one’s named after a philosopher, and that guy’s name is an anagram for “other man.”

I’d also like to take this time to point out the fun of having characters be all-too-aware of their name and what it symbolizes. In the opening of Ex-Heroes, one of the characters laments the fact that his parents hung him with the name George Bailey. If nothing else, in these cases you can assure the audience that you’re well aware of the symbolism-laden name you’ve given your character. Allow me to demonstrate with a quick snippet from a story I’ve been poking at for a while.

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Some poor bastards are cursed from the day they arrive in the world. They’re born into a certain family, with a distinguishing feature, or perhaps get hung with a poorly-chosen name, and that’s really it for them. One such poor bastard, submitted for your approval, is Andrew Sleight.

With a name like that, you’d think his life had been planned from the start. On paper, it even reads like the start of a bad novel. Andrew was abandoned and never knew his parents, getting his name from the officer who amused him with shell games and coin tricks until child services arrived on the scene. He slid invisibly through the foster homes and orphanages, and had a brief brush with crime at the age of fifteen which is now sealed away and will not enter this story again. The other six, more recent brushes (more like broad strokes, really) weigh on him quite heavily. Two petty thefts for shoplifting, three larcenies for pickpocketing, and one grand theft auto, which is self-explanatory.

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The other school of thought about names is… well, you don’t do any of that. Just skim the phone listings or the authors of some books on your desk and there you go.

Odd as it may sound with all that I’ve just scribbled down, I’m not really for or against either method. I think having names with subtle layers and meanings behind them can add to a story. I also think it won’t subtract from a solid story if they’re not there. In my experience, there are times having extra meaning behind a name can add a beautiful level of nuance. There are also, however, times you just get tired of being beaten with the symbolism stick and want to get back to the story.

So, anyway, a few clever ways to find names…

Adjectives. Here’s an easy one. Just rattle off a dozen or so words that describe your character. Odds are you’ll hit one that’s close to a name. Think of Mary Shelley– she gave her character who figures out how to beat death the name Victor. George Lucas named his self-interested space pilot Solo. This can also be the chance for some grim irony, as well. In The Incredibles, there’s something subtle and touching about the man who can lift freight trains being forced to spend the rest of his life as Mr. Parr (or par, as in average).

Baby books. I think we’ve all seen those little books at the checkout counter offering diet tips, how to train pets, or common crossword clues. If you look, there’s usually one with a few hundred baby names and what they mean. Browsing through one of these is an easy way to find the perfect name for your character. Priscilla means dutiful. Oscar means “spear of God.” Yoko means determined or ambitious (no, seriously).

Established names. I mentioned poor George Bailey above. I went to school with a girl named Natalie Wood. Alien Nation features the poor Newcomer cop named Samuel Francisco squaring off against alien crime boss Rudyard Kipling. God only knows how many poor kids have been named after presidents. Sometimes it’s perfectly acceptable for a character to have the same name as a famous figure, either because they have similarities or they’re polar opposites. As I said above though, if you’re going to use this one, you have to acknowledge you’re using it in some way.

Make it up. Cheating, you say? James Barrie made up the name of Wendy for the girl who accompanies his most famous creation. Edgar Rice Burroughs made up most of his character names, since so very few of them were either A) human, B) terrestrial, or C) both. In both cases, the important thing is that they sound right. Wendy reminds us of windy, and the “eee” sound is… well, a bit girly. It’s a young, fresh, happy name. Burroughs, on the other hand, used lots of hard consonants in his names. You never forget the peoples of Mars are all tough warrior races.

(Although—for the fantasy and sci-fi folks—I will toss out that if you make up a totally unpronouncable name, you’re going to be breaking the flow of your story. One of my favorite niche genre novels has a character named aM!xitsa, and it should tell you how good the story is that I could make it past that name a few hundred times…)

Again, despite all this stuff, I don’t think a lack of triple-layered names means you’re a bad writer, and it will not kill your manuscript. Catcher in the Rye would not have fallen apart if the main character was Fred Phelps. To Kill A Mockingbird would still be one of my favorite books if the narrator was nicknamed Chief instead of Scout. Odds are we all still would’ve cheered if the hero of Raiders of the Lost Ark was going by the name Irv Smith when he shot that swordsman in the marketplace.

In the end, the most important thing is just to give some thought before you name a character. Not deep thought. Not meaningful thought. But if you want to bring them to life, you’ve got to put something into that choice.

Next week, I’ve been thinking of a few things I wanted to say about having a few things to say.

Until then, get back to writing.