tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6010942979784569627.post8735566573611188146..comments2024-02-06T04:20:38.551-08:00Comments on Reading, Writing, Revising: Talking About SettingLisa Ecksteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11469107523441985396noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6010942979784569627.post-68896407218917040212010-11-20T07:35:23.777-08:002010-11-20T07:35:23.777-08:00Thanks for finding that! (Though I must have the b...Thanks for finding that! (Though I must have the book it is taken from.) Yes, this definitely overlaps with the talk I heard. And while it does not give pointers to novelists, those ideas are beneath all the worlds LeGuin has built.<br /><br />It almost seems as if the world is really the starting point, the foundation of her novels.Henri Picciottohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06875198126877279937noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6010942979784569627.post-63358952608902923272010-11-19T22:37:13.921-08:002010-11-19T22:37:13.921-08:00Searching around for Le Guin essays that might be ...Searching around for Le Guin essays that might be connected to that talk, I found this one with the intriguing title <a href="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Ursula_K._Le_Guin__A_Non-Euclidean_View_of_California_as_a_Cold_Place_to_Be.html" rel="nofollow">A Non-Euclidean View of California as a Cold Place to Be</a>.Lisa Ecksteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11469107523441985396noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6010942979784569627.post-55560004749770045772010-11-19T22:10:34.980-08:002010-11-19T22:10:34.980-08:00One novel where the world is completely essential ...One novel where the world is completely essential to the story and characters is Michael Chabon's _The Yiddish Policemen's Union_, which takes place in an alternate-history Jewish state of sorts in Alaska. He won both the Nebula and Hugo awards for it.<br /><br />Which reminds me of other Nebula/Hugo winning novels (by Ursula LeGuin): _The Dispossessed_, and _The Left Hand of Darkness_ -- in those too the worlds are key and unforgettable. (All these years later, I remember the worlds, but not so much the stories!)<br /><br />I went to hear her give a talk on the topic of world building at Mills College, more than 30 years ago. To my surprise, what she talked about was the California that had been built --a world-- by destroying the world that was here before. I remember being quite taken by her argument, but I don't remember if or how it applied to her novel-writing. I wonder if she ever turned the talk into an essay.Henri Picciottohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06875198126877279937noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6010942979784569627.post-29986859662038706922010-11-11T11:42:04.628-08:002010-11-11T11:42:04.628-08:00Yeah, I would definitely be in trouble if I'd ...Yeah, I would definitely be in trouble if I'd waited until the third draft to have any idea where the story takes place or what that world is like. My situation is that I know this stuff in my head, but I haven't put much of it onto the page. It's still not an ideal situation, and I already have some problems where details I've been vague or wrong about mean that the plot has to change.<br /><br />Your analogy with game-writing is perfect. In all these cases, it's possible to have a decent game or story with a setting tacked on, but the experience is so much richer when the setting is integral.Lisa Ecksteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11469107523441985396noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6010942979784569627.post-25925384509425202322010-11-11T06:15:43.510-08:002010-11-11T06:15:43.510-08:00When I read the line about waiting until the third...When I read the line about waiting until the third draft to really put in the sentence, I started to form a comment in my head, but it turned out to be something along the lines of your penultimate paragraph.<br /><br />I was thinking of it as analogous to game-writing: ideally, in a game with narrative (like an rpg or computer story-based game, but it's true for board games too), you want the mechanics to be an integral part of the story, not just tacked on. Same for the universe. The characters should be interacting with stuff in the universe and the mechanics of how stuff can be done, and obstacles and solutions should be at least partially made out of those things. <br /><br />If you could just as easily change all the "paint" and keep the identical plot and characters, then you're not getting much good out of the setting. It should be not only interesting, but plot-relevant, that we're in San Jose and not Haiti. (Think of good SF/F, where the tech or the magic or whatever it is drives the plot.)<br /><br />(Now it's highly ironic for me to be saying this, as I am horrible at setting and write all my characters in a vacuum and then torture myself trying to write a setting around my plot constraints. Do as I say, not as I do. :) )Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com