HOW SETTING CAN TRIGGER STORY IDEAS
When an Amber Quill author agrees to provide a story for an AmberPax, the stepping- off stone for everyone is the theme of the Pax. From there on out, unless the director nixes it, anything your imagination conjures up is a go.
As I thought about providing an erotic novella for a Pax with a food theme, I immediately thought about dark chocolate and the town where I live. It's a lovely, medium size town with historic Victorian homes and orange groves where blossoms scent the air with sweetness every spring and provide delectable tastes when the Washington navels ripen in December and the Valencias in June.
Someday I'll write a story about Christmas naranjas, oranges, and a Mexican family living in an old home in groves maintained by the father, but in my contemporary paranormal SWEET CHOCOLATE ECSTASY, my heroine rents an historic home in a grove. I converted my favorite coffee shop into a candy store called Sweet Chocolate Ecstasy, and made her a chocolatier.
Did it all just come rolling out of me? Oh, heavens, no. Once I had my two settings--the town and the shop--it took a lot of thinking to pull it all together.
Jot down some settings you love, are afraid of, feel challenged by in some way.
1. Spooky house overgrown with ivy on my 5 mile walk
2. The "low" Mojave desert around Palm Springs
3. A cruise ship
4. Walt Disney World, Buena Park, CA or Orlando, FL
5. Crestline in the San Bernardino mountains
Then think about it.
Carolina Valdez - author of passions that unlock the sweet ecstasies of love
Carolina's Website
Carolina's MySpace
Carolina's Blog
Carolina's Shelfari
As I thought about providing an erotic novella for a Pax with a food theme, I immediately thought about dark chocolate and the town where I live. It's a lovely, medium size town with historic Victorian homes and orange groves where blossoms scent the air with sweetness every spring and provide delectable tastes when the Washington navels ripen in December and the Valencias in June.
Someday I'll write a story about Christmas naranjas, oranges, and a Mexican family living in an old home in groves maintained by the father, but in my contemporary paranormal SWEET CHOCOLATE ECSTASY, my heroine rents an historic home in a grove. I converted my favorite coffee shop into a candy store called Sweet Chocolate Ecstasy, and made her a chocolatier.
Did it all just come rolling out of me? Oh, heavens, no. Once I had my two settings--the town and the shop--it took a lot of thinking to pull it all together.
Jot down some settings you love, are afraid of, feel challenged by in some way.
1. Spooky house overgrown with ivy on my 5 mile walk
2. The "low" Mojave desert around Palm Springs
3. A cruise ship
4. Walt Disney World, Buena Park, CA or Orlando, FL
5. Crestline in the San Bernardino mountains
Then think about it.
Carolina Valdez - author of passions that unlock the sweet ecstasies of love
Carolina's Website
Carolina's MySpace
Carolina's Blog
Carolina's Shelfari
posted by Carolina Valdez at 2:09 PM
3 Comments:
What a great post, Carolina. I couldn't agree more about settings being wonderful launching points for entire stories. I desperately need to set a story at a tropical resort similar to the one I stay at every year. It's on my "to write" list. :-)
Lacey
You are so right, Carolina, about a setting triggering an idea. I live in a steel town and 50+ years ago the north end was where the immigrants (mostly Italians) who'd come to work in the steel mills lived. A wonderful area of ethnic shops and restaurants. But then the Italians moved out and the Portuguese moved in, then the Vietnamese came, and people from Bosnia and Africa and a dozen other countries. Some of the original families are still there, but the neighborhood has changed. And that made it the perfect setting for a story I have coming out later this year.
Chris
Yes great idea, it just might help me with a very stagnant book I 've been struggling with.
Another idea that has worked for me in the past is to go online to tourist sites and print out a strange or exotic landscape or scene. Then I add my characters to the picture that I have printed out in front of me.
bill/elliott
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