A Question

[awanderingbard]

I have a question for my fellow writers: when your characters enter a location that's not established (a place you've seen in a show or film) do you create the location, or is the location already there when they arrive?

Because when I'm world-building, the location is there and I don't have to think about what it looks like because it looks like what it is. In other words, with something like Molly's flat, I don't go 'and I'll put the couch here and the TV here', it's already there when I picture it. Even with somewhere like a hospital room, which my characters are in a lot, in each case it's a different layout without my consciously making it so. I also find it really hard, because the locations are so fixed, to move something around that's not working for a scene. For example, if my characters need to move to the left to make the scene work but I've got in my mind that that object is on the right, I get very distressed at having to move it. Even if I haven't written anything about where it is.

So, how do you build worlds?

Somewhat related to this:



I think this is my favourite room I've made so far. The library at the Holmes Ancestral Home. Though I still need to figure out how the lights work. The glare on the door is annoying.

Comments

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

I'm terrible and don't plan out anything. I should, and I know I should, but I just don't.

[aelfgyfu_mead]

I think I do some of the same thing. I notice it more when I'm reading, actually—when I mentally have things or, more often, people arranged a certain way and then have to change it because a detail comes up that makes it clear I've got things wrong (Sherlock wouldn't be taking John's pulse from his left wrist if he were on John's right, ugh! Or I thought Mycroft was on the other side of that chair, so how did Sherlock get in his face so fast? Argh!)

I usually don't have to think too hard about how things look when I'm creating them.

What gives me trouble are sets where I can see part and can't work out the rest! Sherlock does seem to have a bathroom attached to his room, but we don't see that until s2, so I spent s1 wondering where the heck the bathroom was. (I have a toilet obsession. Have to know where it is just in case I need it, you know?) Then I've spent the time since wondering how on earth that bathroom could fit there! In fact, you gave me this link, but that's a flat plan that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I have a bit of a draft Sherlock fic, but mostly I don't have to deal with it too much because I don't write fic for that fandom (though I read oodles of it). No, it was Primeval that gave me the worst trouble. Stephen's flat? It really, really doesn't make sense.

[aeron-lanart.livejournal.com]

Places that don't exist in the canon in which I'm writing don't cause me problems as everything is just *there* when characters walk in and if they want to move the furniture round, they do.

Places that exist literally but not visually are the same (e.g.McAnally's in the Dresden Files doesn't cause any problems, it's so well described in the books).

Something that exists on the telly can be a minefield. I've watched and screen capped Dresden Files and Sherlock til the cows came home just to get the layouts straight in my head and even then I've taken liberties (I refuse to believe that the teeny-tiny en-suite thing next to Sherlock's room is the only bathroom at Baker Street, I bet there's a decent sized one upstairs next to John's room, with a huge claw-foot bath).

I am considering building 221 (a, b and c) Baker Street in Sims 2 at some point, just because. Usually I build castles, so it would be a challenge to do something different but I think a game reinstall might be required first.