Dear Reader,
You know that moment you realized something about yourself? Something you do or think all the time that seems obvious when you
look back on it, but you haven't thought about it before. Like, "huh, most of my wardrobe is in shades of blue" or "the first song I listen to when I get in the car is always a Taylor Swift song."
I had a writer revelation like that this week. I'm a setting addict. It's a big, huge, wow, how did I not notice it before? thing.
Let me explain. BB&HB, aka the book I'm working on, is a fantasy romance. Setting is so important when you're writing a book set in a different world. I want to make sure my reader really has a clear picture of the place where the characters are. I want them to know how it's like our world and how it's different. I
want to give you both realism and a sense of wonder.
Like this city my main character is traveling through in the chapter I'm currently working on:
"Eventually the road turned and the great city appeared through
the trees. In the lee of a green rolling hill where three smaller streams became one wide rushing river nestled the city of Seven Spires.
It was as I remembered it: grand and glorious and whole.
A breath I hadn’t realized
I was holding rushed out of me and my heart beat easier. I drank in the sight.
Though it was called Seven Spires, the city of endless spires would have been more accurate. Conical roofs topped with spiraling artifice arrays sprung from almost every building. The thousands of arrays glinted like gilded weather-vanes as they spun and twisted in the sunlight. Each
array gave off a faint glimmering aura, a manifestation of the detection spells that combed the air and tracked the energies that moved there. Those shifting, shimmering patterns sparkled like faerie lights across the rooftops.
A beautiful side effect of the trade that had built the city."
The thing that surprised me was...as it turns out I do this with every book. Whether it has magic or not.
It's the same process if I'm writing a hidden club in Manhattan (You Are My Favorite Bad Idea) or an old mansion in Paris
(The Wild Prince) or an entire fantasy city (BB&HB). Every book has at least one place that might as well be from a fantasy book with the amount of description and level of detail I put in.
I always knew I was a snarky banter writer, but as it turns out I'm a
setting girl at heart too.
