taking place

[marycatelli]

So the hero and another boy have been magically thrown through space -- it's a trap! -- and landed somewhere.

Somewhere indeed.  Gotta describe the location.  Especially since the boys are not complete fools, the first thing they will do is look around and see what happened to them.

Cliche popped to mind:  a dark location -- with a light spell, a cold and damp hall of stone.

Hmmm.  I did jot it down, but was it the wisest?

Then, playing with it, I conjured up a hall of mirrors brililant with light, and remembered why cliches are cliches.  Omnious has its perks here.

And given that -- hmm -- I know what the person who trapped them intends.  Perhaps I should establish her approach first.  Jollying along the target to get cooperation?  Trying to overawe him?  Or to frighten him into compliance?  She'd choose the location accordingly.

And then there are the possible magical properties of it.

And there is still the question of the mood I want to set.  Ominious in some way it has to be, because I know what the boys will do in reaction to it.  And not because they were snatched through space to reach it.  They were expecting that.  At most it's that the location seems farther away than they expected that contributes. . . .

hmmmmm. . . . .

Comments

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Are they necessarily indoors?

[marycatelli]

That was one thing I played with, but I think so -- unless I decide on a hedged in location or the like -- because they would want the boy trapped.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Oh, well, you could do a Terry Gilliam bit and have him standing on a pedestal ten feet square by a thousand feet high, lit by a single spotlight, in an otherwise lightless void.  'Less he sprout wings he ain't goin' nowhere.

[marycatelli]

It's the people who mucked with the spell who want him trapped, not necessarily the author. 0:)

THX1138

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhiteVoidRoom

A featureless white room. So featureless, in fact, that you can't even tell
where the walls, floor, and ceiling end—they all blend seamlessly together
under the uniform light, so the chamber looks more like a white void than a
room. Sometimes, the only indication that it's not a void is the fact that
the characters have something solid to stand on.


As literal white voids represent some "other realm"—usually a result of a
dream or crossing over to another universe—physical rooms that replicate
this visual effect will have the same connotations. They make excellent
cells for imprisonment or interrogation—the absence of visible exits (or
any sign that the outside world exists at all) implies no possibility of
escape. Or, the white can represent sterility, making these rooms suitable
for otherworldly hospitalization. Or, it can represent the limitless
possibilities of a blank canvas, so this room could be a currently-inactive
holosimulator, or some other place where literally anything can happen…


Inverted in The Time Ships, by Stephen Baxter. The Time Traveler is
imprisoned by Morlocks by means of a single shaft of light in a seemingly-
infinite black room. He's psychologically unable to walk out of sight of
the beam…