Google Maps: The Descriptive Writer's Secret Weapon

One of the things I like about writing in imagined worlds is the freedom you have to invent detail. It’s a place the reader isn’t familiar with, so it has to be described to them so they’ll understand what’s in your head.

Of course the flip side of that is you have to describe all that stuff so they’ll understand.

Writing in a familiar place is easier in that regard. You don’t want to waste a lot of the reader’s time telling them all the details about things they are familiar with. But even in a familiar setting there are details they need to know, and it’s your job as a writer to provide them.

This comes back to the old saw that you should ‘write what you know.’ What doesn’t occur to most people is that ‘what you know’ is not limited to what lives in your head. It can be what’s in front of your eyes, too.

The story I’m currently writing is set in a fictional world, but it’s a world that’s a lot like ours, except that it has suffered some sort of apocalyptic catastrophe and oh yeah, there are zombies. Aside from that though, it looks a lot like the real world, with cities that resemble ours, people that are like ours, a culture that was like ours until catastrophe struck.

I’m trying to go for a feeling of authenticity in the city descriptions, but there’s a problem. I’ve never lived in a large city. I’ve visited them, sure, but never spent enormous amounts of time in one. I live in a small town, so I can’t really just open my door, go to the coffee shop and write what’s in front of my eyes. That would work for a small town, but not a large urban center.

Enter Google Maps and StreetView!

While absolutely NOT a replacement for research or visiting areas in person, if possible, StreetView (or similar services from Microsoft and others) can give you instant access to the world, at least on a visual level.

There are certain scenes in The Fast and the Dead that I want to be distinctive, to have the feeling that they’re real places, that they really exist. The best way to accomplish this is to base them on places that actually do really exist.

Ideally you’d use a place you know or can go to, but if you can’t, or if you simply don’t know something suitable, pick a real-world area that evokes the feel you’re going for and find a suitable street. Virtually explore it until you find the perfect building to describe.

It’s unlikely you’ll find an exact, 1:1 match, unless you happen to be writing in a real location and you’re describing that specific location. That’s okay though. It means that what you describe will remain within the realm of things that come out of your head; you won’t be lifting your descriptions off of a photo and pasting them into your writing. You’re going to have to adapt the descriptions, accommodate the differences, invent or change additional details.

It’ll still require some work, but the realism and detail of your descriptions will thank you for it.

That Awkward 'Between Stories' Feeling

So yesterday I finished off The Price of Independence, after 26 days working on it. And those 26 days don’t count the several days I wrote other things instead. In all I spent more than a month on that one story. That’s as long as it took me to write all the other Prices stories together.

That’s okay, stories are done when they’re done. The problem then becomes what to do next?

Instead of having something known to go back to and work on, I’m left with a blank canvas, a world without boundaries. I can write everything, which too often means I can write nothing. So I start looking for ways to narrow things down.

I admit it… Since the start of November, I’ve hit up tvtropes.com more than a few times. Their Story Generator is a great means of doing two things.

1: It can give you valuable sparks of inspiration that serve as catalysts for new ideas that give you new directions to explore.

2: It can be an evil time suck that keeps you from writing anything for days.

Obviously I try for #1.

I visited TVTropes again today when the time came to do my writing, and one of the very first that came up is something that’s been pinging around inside my head for a long time; years in fact. Not so much a whole story idea as a setting; I’m a sucker for post-apocalyptic fiction, and would like to try my hand at some fairly soon.

On the other hand, the pseudo-Christmas story I wrote over the holidays was set in the far future in what could be argued as post-apocalyptic Earth, so maybe I already have. It was fun to write too, as a mini-break from the proto-steampunk of Prices. Some more straight up sci-fi might be fun to get into.

That’s the other thing I do to come up with new ideas; your current writing is your most fertile ground for new concepts, whether they’re directly related to your current projects or not. Prices is a good example of that. I had only the roughest, most primitive ideas of what I wanted from that series of stories when I began writing The Price of Independence back in October. As I wrote it and then set it aside to write the others in November, ideas came to me faster and more readily as the fiction informed my thinking, metaphorically speaking to me and telling me which ideas to explore next.

Ultimately I think that’s the best source of new ideas, but you’ll still find me browsing TV tropes now and then. Send a rescue team if I’m there longer than a week though!

More on Prices:

I originally envisioned Prices as the title of a book, with the six stories I’ve written making up the book once they’re all done. I’ve been wondering lately though if maybe Prices is more of a series name and each of the stories should be more of a novella-length piece in the series. Either way I go with Prices, the six existing stories are not the end. I can and will write more in that series, and soon I’ll need another new lead character.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is a Writing Inspiration

I’ve done many types of writing over the course of my life including many types of fiction and non-fiction. Some of the most fascinating writing I’ve ever had to do was in video games.

I’ve written before about how oddly liberating writing under constraints can be, and game writing is some of the most restrained writing you’ll ever have to do.

Lately I’ve been playing Bioware’s new Star Wars: The Old Republic game. It’s an MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online game) similar to World of Warcraft in many respects, which I was never really a big fan of.

Bioware, however, is well known among gamers for the incredible quality of the storytelling in their games. The problem was that they weren’t known for multi-player games; mostly they created epic-scale games with incredible stories that you play through on your own.

It’s long been hoped that they would be able to bring a richness of story to MMOs that has so far been lacking. They met my hopes, and then exceeded them. Not only did they craft stories (multiple, yes) that are as good as those found in their other games, they’ve done unique story lines for different types of characters you might play, different decision paths you as the player may head down, and most impressively at all, they’ve included some stories called Flashpoints that accommodate several players at once.

The general complexity of these multi-player conversations is nothing I’d think of as out of the ordinary. During the course of a conversation, the character your group of friends is talking to will speak. (And in The Old Republic, they really do speak. The amount of voice acting in the game is astounding, and of incredibly high quality.)

Mass Effect, another Bioware game featuring fantastic voice acting.

After they’ve said their piece though, you’ll inevitably come to a decision point. This is where in a typical solo game you’d choose what your character says, and the game goes on from there, telling you what the reaction is depending on how you act. Generally you have several possible ways to react to any decision point - a “good” option and a “bad” option, and sometimes a middle-of-the-road option.

That’s exactly what happens here too, in multi-player flashpoints, with several big differences I’ve never encountered before.

If you are playing along with 2 other people and they’re both part of the conversation, all of you decide what you want your individual character to say. All 3 characters are present as a group talking to the game character.

Once you’ve all picked your dialogue option, the game “rolls the dice” for you and assigns you a number.

Once ALL of you have picked your dialogue options and have your numbers, the game decides which character speaks. The rule seems to be highest number gets to speak, and in the case of a tie, the one who chose their option fastest speaks.

Game dialogue has come a LONG way from these days.

I can’t express well enough just how unique and exhilarating it was to have conversations like this in a game where I wasn’t in complete control over what happened. It lead to me seeing dialogue options I wouldn’t otherwise have seen, which was fantastic; it felt like a much more living, breathing conversation where you’re not just talking to a computer. It felt much more alive. It was hard to believe such a simple mechanic could provide such a huge benefit.

Context is everything when writing dialogue, whether it’s in a book or a video game. I often find myself falling into the habit of just writing dialogue lines straight out, with little or no context. So far everything I’ve got up in the other sections are first drafts, so that’s okay. Star Wars: The Old Republic has reminded me to make sure I have good context for any conversation.

Reading Out of Left Field

A while back I posted about self-imposed deadlines and my experience with the Goodreads Reading Challenge for 2011. One of the problems I’ve had since then was a shortage of time and a lot of books left to read.

This has turned out to be a mixed blessing/curse in itself. I read a lot of books and I’m a very fast reader, but if I want to finish the challenge on time, I have to read 15 more books in 10 more days. To do that, I’m being forced to read some VERY short books. Right now I’m going through a whole pile of R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps books.

I’m totally okay with going outside my comfort zone to read books I normally wouldn’t consider, so the fact that these are aimed primarily at younger kids doesn’t bother me. In fact, I’m finding it to be incredibly worth while as a source of writing lessons.

Some takeaways I’m finding as I go through them:

• Don’t waste a lot of time describing things your audience is already familiar with.

I write in a make-believe universe, so I have to describe a lot, but these books take place in what is arguably the real world, or at least one that’s supposed to convincingly look like it. Detail is kept to a minimum so that kids reading these books can easily substitute images from their own minds and make the experience more invovling and more personal, all the more important since these are horror stories for kids. Making it personal makes it VERY effective.

• Give characters some strong, easily identifiable traits.

Usually this is done through dialogue; maybe a character has a catch phrase they repeat a lot, or yells a lot, or speaks largely in questions. Maybe it’s something done outside of dialogue, such as a character with a sprained ankle who has to walk with a limp constantly. These traits help the reader immediately latch on to the character and help make him, her or it memorable.

• Keep the action moving.

I’d estimate these books come in at roughly 20,000 to 25,000 words apiece. That’s NOT a lot of words for an entire book - NaNoWriMo books are typically 50,000 words, and those are very short for a finished novel. A more typical length for a book for adult readers is roughly 100,000 words. 

This means the Goosebumps series have to be very tight and concise, almost more like a long short story or novella. No time is wasted on trivial details. If something is described at all, you can be sure it’s going to play into the story somehow.

The more I read outside my usual stomping grounds of science fiction, science fact and fantasy, the more determined I am to read even more widely. It’s amazing how much you can pick up from a kid’s book.