i am a writer, a writer of fictions; i am the heart that you call home

[faeriemaiden]

Good heavens, if I could choose anyone in the world to be able to write just like, I'd choose Eva Ibbotson. My poor historical novel looks so weak and unencompassing in comparison: hardly to mention sparsely charactered. Of course, she lived through much of the history about which she tends to write in such glorious detail -- well, the Second World

Comments

[aohdwyn]

Hoo boy, do I feel you. My cast of characters is just getting bigger and bigger and I feel this need to make all of them 3-dimensional, but that just takes up a lot of SPACE in your head, you know?

I've already decided to set all of my stories that are in this world either in Chicago or the surrounding area, mostly because of exactly the problem you're describing here. (Also because I love Chicago, it needs to get more press, and I LOVE love love when authors set books here, and I can recognize things, and feel warm and fuzzy. Time Traveler's Wife ftw!) But it's hard when you really want to place a novel somewhere you've never been, and technically can never go to.
Uhm, watch a lot of Sherlock Holmes movies? Or movies set in this time period, period? (My advice for this novel of your keeps becoming "Sherlock Holmes!1!" Not sure why... *analysis impending...*I think because, of all the fiction I've read contemporary to that particular period and place, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories have always felt so very strongly of Victorian London, that it's impossible for me to separate one from the other. That and Sherlock Holmes rocks. God, my grammar sucks. I blame the fact that I just took melatonin, and am about to fall over.)

Anyway, as I keep telling mySELF -- FIRST DRAFT. This kind of stuff can get filled in. Think of this process as the pencil portion of a comic book, and you'll go back and ink over the lines, and then wash in the color, with subsequent drafts. Right now, background can BE solid white. That's okay. That will come later. Right now, plot is probably the most important thing to fixate on.