Yess, another post in the Nanowrimo series. This time it’s your universe, or rather, I’m writing about the universe my characters are in. You’ve got to know where on Earth (or non-Earth) your characters are to let them play around, you see.
Or else… well, it’s just characters and your story won’t have those little details that makes it real for the characters themselves to live in.
So let us build a universe.
Let’s recap on my story. What I wanna write is a superhero chic-lit where the protagonist is one of the tailors who makes the outfits.
In this universe, I got to know how is it like there. To make it simple, it’s gonna be Earth but an alternate reality one, of course. Superheroes and supervillains exist but to which extent? Also, how do civilians and law enforcement officers work with it too?
It’s got to be something that’s general knowledge to the characters in the story somehow since they’ve been living in that world for ages. Well, metaphorically of course since it’s best if you made a believable universe where your characters didn’t just pop out of nowhere like that but instead have backstories and childhoods etc.
You don’t have to write their childhood and stuff what not in the story itself but you still got to make sure you know your characters are “real” and not just names you stuff into a story. Right, that’s called character development or whatever, just make your characters real, okay? Let’s get back to universe building.
Universe building is like building props and a set in movies only it’s unlimited budget since you’re doing the imagining anyway.
So guys, since imagination is free, don’t skimp on it, okay? Even if you base your story in our reality, it is no excuse not to imagine how it is. In fact, it should just make things easier on you to describe the surroundings.
Oh yeah, my novel WIP title will be “Tailored to Hit”. Heh, heh.
Alright, so my current progress in planning… How shall my universe be:
- Like this but with supers involved
- Mass destruction is sucky, like villains care anyway so there should also be professional clean up crew/ builders etc who take care of stuff
- Technology can be advanced, only to the really rich/smarty evil/good geniuses and oh the government too
- Other wise it’s all normal in a way
- Not THAT many supers. Maybe a league of it in every country or something. Most of them outsourced to Japan though. BWURHURHUR
- Villains don’t have to be that obvious, there’s always the underground network. It’s stupid to be caught by the police anyway so why risk things so much?
Okay, so I somewhat know how my universe is gonna be like, it’s not gonna be so crime saturated cause hey, the law enforcement units ARE doing what they’re supposed to do. It’s just for the rare chances of supers happening and all.
Obviously, crime mostly happen in densely populated areas anyway. So yes, we’ll set the scene in some fictional city.
What I like is being descriptively vague. Vague enough so you can imagine it wherever it can be but descriptive enough to be imagined the way it’s supposed to be. Ehh, it’s a balance and I like it that way since the reader can imagine it happening in their own place somehow or a place they know.
And okay, even if you can imagine it any where you want… I will “base” it a bit on Singapore cause hey, write what you know, ya know? Plus I got a funky cool reasoning why villains would be around chillin’ like a villain and all that.
Amusingly if you’re an X-men reader, Madripoor is based on Singapore anyway. BUT ANYWHO, plot attacked since my universe is getting defined. I can’t post it here for obvious reasons but yesss. Building universes and worlds are fun, non?
Crap, even if I like the whole being vaguely descriptive, it’s just so freaking tempting to be descriptive-descriptive now. I’ll see what happens when I write on 1st November anyway and we’ll see which is funner.
