the muddle in the middle
Sep. 17th, 2010 01:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliah, the interrelations of world-building and plot. . . .
HItting a point in the outline where everything I know will happen still needs more set-up. But Raymond Chandler's sage rule -- When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand. -- needs you to know what is, for this world, the equivalent of the man with a gun in his hand.
Even when the characters are on a quest, with all its ease of introducing new elements, and the answer is "have them stumble on something weird, wacky, or wonderful (or all three)" that's insufficiently precise to tell me what sort of weird or wacky or wonderful thing they could find. A world chock-full of magic has its advantages for making things wonderful, but it does require lots and lots and lots of invention.
sigh
HItting a point in the outline where everything I know will happen still needs more set-up. But Raymond Chandler's sage rule -- When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand. -- needs you to know what is, for this world, the equivalent of the man with a gun in his hand.
Even when the characters are on a quest, with all its ease of introducing new elements, and the answer is "have them stumble on something weird, wacky, or wonderful (or all three)" that's insufficiently precise to tell me what sort of weird or wacky or wonderful thing they could find. A world chock-full of magic has its advantages for making things wonderful, but it does require lots and lots and lots of invention.
sigh