Sense of Place 2
On Thursday I also posted about Sense of Place, mainly discussing it in the context of Haarth, The Wall of Night series world.
Luke commented saying: “Do you think it’s easier to achieve a strong sense of place in an alternate world, like Haarth in “The Heir of Night”, as opposed to “Thornspell” which you have said in a number of places is pretty much this world and ‘almost but not quite’ Holy Roman Empire?”
I have reflected on this a little and overall I don’t think it is “easier.” At one level, creating an alternate world may give you more freedom to create things the way you want, but conversely, choosing places within this world for your setting leaves you free to draw out the details that support your story and focus on other aspects of the story.
Using Thornspell as an example, sense of place is still very strong there–in the opening sequence where Sigismund first encounters the enchanted wood, and the later forest of Thorn; in the description of the sleeping palace and also the capital city of ‘kingdom not so very far away’ where the story is set.
Thornspell has an historical setting, but I can also think of some contemporary urban fantasies where the use of real-world places are used to powerful ‘world building’ effect. Neil Gaiman’s American Gods would be one for me, also Tim Powers’ Las Vegas and Los Angeles in Last Call and Expiration Date respectively. In terms of almost-but-not-quite-this-contemporary-world building, I personally don’t think you can go past Robin McKinley’s urban fantasy, Sunshine, or Charles De Lint’s Newport, the setting for many of his novels, all of which have a unqiuely North american flavour
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In all these stories the sense of place is very strong, almost a character in its own right, and I feel that this sort of world building would have taken considerable imagination and craft. And I know that I personally put as much care into the world building aspect of Thornspell as I did with both The Heir of Night and The Gathering of the Lost. So my ‘long answer’ to your excellent question, Luke, is that I don’t think it is necessarily easier, just different—and as always, with (imho) good fiction, driven by the needs of the story, not the preferences of the author.
I agree with you. I’ve never written speculative fiction, but I think that it isn’t necessarily easier to create/achieve a sense of place when writing about an alternate world, because a writer has to create a sense of place in every book. Creating a sense of place when writing about a completely fictional world is probably just a bit different and it may give the author more freedom to do certain things.
(I think that a sense of place, a good story and worldbuilding are important elements of speculative fiction. It doesn’t matter if the author writes about an alternate world or a fictional world as long as the story is good.)
But I know you have read a lot of spec fic, Seregil, so have plenty of scope for reflection on this topic!:) And I totally agree with you that at the end of the day, it is the overall quality of the story that’s what matters, no matter how wonderful any one aspect, such as world building, may be on its own. For example, in the early Robert Jordan “Wheel of Time” novels I thought the magic system he created was exceptional and fascinating. But as the series went on that was not enough to make up for “filler” books and some of the more hackneyed and (for me) unpalatable aspects of the developing story. (I have discussed this more in the third of my “Is Epic Fantasy Misogynist?” series, here.)
Yes, I have to confess that I’ve read lots of speculative fiction. 😉
The overall quality of the story is indeed important. Worldbuilding alone isn’t enough to make a book good, because a good story makes a book interesting and addictive.
When a writer manages to write a good and captivating book, it’s almost impossible to put the book down. I recently read Courtney Schafer’s debut fantasy book (“The Whitefire Crossing”) and I loved it because of its fascinating and slowly developing story.
Seregil, thank you for the recommendation—I shall see if I can find a copy of “The Whitefire Crossing.”:) I don’t know if you saw on a recent “just Arrived,” but I have a copy of Finnish author Hannu Rajaniemi’s “The Quantum Thief” to read. I have only had a quick peek so far, but it looks very interesting!
I hope you can find “The Whitefire Crossing”, because it’s worth reading. It was published by Night Shade Books in July/August, so it’s a brand new book.
It’s nice to hear that you have a copy of Hannu Rajaniemi’s “The Quantum Thief”. I read it a couple of months ago and I liked it a lot (it was a bit different kind of science fiction). I hope you enjoy reading it.
I will let you know how I find “The Quantum Thief.”:) I doubt “The Whitefire Crossing” will make it into bookshops here so I shall have to resort to the internet, no doubt …